


Breathless

by machine_dove, Sproings



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Demisexual Character, F/F, Howard Stark puts the all in allosexual, M/M, Pining, Tiny Angry Asthmatic Vampire Spy Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-07 13:35:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7716721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/machine_dove/pseuds/machine_dove, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sproings/pseuds/Sproings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scrawny chest, slender arms, bony knees.  The serum didn’t change any of it.  It didn’t even take away Steve’s asthma.  </p><p>But he could run without tiring.  Lift three times his own body weight.  Grow fangs and bite ... Oh that’s not good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This is complete, we'll be posting new chapters on Tuesdays and Thursdays

Steve knew pain.  

He knew the crisp, sudden pain that came from fists and boots and broken bones.  He knew the dull, constant pain of his twisted spine.  Knew the endless ache of losing his mother, of never knowing a father.  Knew the sharp ceaseless want he had always felt for his best friend, his only friend.

This was something else entirely.  

This was agony so supreme it overtook everything else.  Death had never hurt like this, all of the times he’d brushed against it and dragged himself back from the brink.

He was only aware that he’d been screaming because of the sudden quiet when he inhaled again.

Into that quiet he heard a voice saying, “We have to stop, this is killing him!”

“NO!”  That was his own voice, and he wondered that he was still able to form words.  “KEEP GOING!”  The only thing worse than suffering this much would be doing it all for nothing.  He had to go on.  

It went on.  

He had no idea for how long.  It felt infinite, until it ended.

The capsule opened, (oh right they’d put him in a capsule and there were needles and it was forever ago) and there was enough light for him to see again.  He blinked down at the new body the greatest advances in science had given him.

Scrawny hairless chest, slender arms, bony knees.  Jesus fuck, he was exactly the same.

“Well, that was underwhelming,” Stark said with a dismissive flap of one hand.  “So much for your magic serum.  Looks like I’m our only hope of stopping these Nazi vampires after all.  C’mon Philips, I’ve got a couple of prototypes I think are just the ticket.”

The two men left without so much as a backwards glance at Steve, still strapped into the machine.  That was fine, he was used to disappointing people.  Nearly everyone else trailed after them, save only Dr. Erskine and Agent Carter and a couple of techs who were still at work recording data.  

“I’m sorry,” he said as Erskine worked on undoing the straps.  “I know you took a chance on me, I’m sorry I let you down.”

“None of that,” Erskine said, eyes warm.  “I think they perhaps put too much importance on the outside, when it’s what’s in here that counts,” he continued, tapping his finger on Steve’s chest.

Steve’s heart was beating like a metronome, strong and steady.  Stronger and steadier, in fact, than it ever had before.  The flutter was gone, and it hadn’t done the awkward lurching skip at all since the pain had stopped.

“Some tests are in order, I think,” Erskine continued as he handed Steve a shirt.  “A full physical, and then we shall take a look at your strength and speed.”

Steve flexed one arm, feeling sour.  “I hope you’re not expecting much.”

“My expectations haven’t changed in the least.  I think you are meant for very great things, Steven.”

“If you say so, I --”  He stopped, blinking rapidly as his eyes refocused on Agent Carter.  “Wow.”  He took another step closer to her, reached out, and without thinking brushed her lips with his fingertips.  

“I  _ beg _ your pardon?”  Her voice cracked out, as quick and sharp as a bullet.

Steve flushed and pulled back.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean...it’s just...the  _ color! _  I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Peggy looked decidedly unimpressed.  “It’s the same color I’ve worn every single day since this blasted war started.”

If that was true, then...Steve scanned the room, eyes catching on the bright lights on the equipment at the edge of the room.  It was, wow, it was just like Bucky had said. "Yellow is bright, happy, warm like the sun on a spring day. Red is danger, life, the heart of a fire and the blood running through your veins."  Steve could see it all now, reds and yellows and bright, bright green.  Even Professor Erskine looked different, his sweater a deep crimson, the veins and arteries under his skin warm and pulsing.  Steve laughed once, surprised and delighted.

“I can see!  Colors, I mean.  Everything is...it’s amazing.  Is this what everybody sees, all the time?”

“This is wonderful,”  Erskine beamed, looking delighted.  “Perhaps we have had more success than the Colonel assumed, yes?  Let us take stock and see what other surprises you have for us.”

The basic physical exam revealed the slight curve in his spine was gone, Steve’s blood pressure was now beautifully normal, and his heart flutter seemed to have entirely vanished.  The urine test was even more of a surprise.

“Based on the color we have here,” Erskine explained as he pulled the test tube out of the boiling water, “the quantity of sugar in your urine is exactly what we would expect to see in a normal adult.  We will of course need to test further to be sure, but I think it likely that your diabetes is now a thing of the past.”

That was...hell, even if that was the only thing to came out of this, Steve was going to consider himself lucky.  And maybe he still had a shot at serving if the medical issues that had gotten him classed him as 4F were gone.  

_ Physically, mentally, or morally unfit _ , a tiny voice in the back of his mind whispered.  Even if he was physically fit, he was still morally unfit by reason of perversion.  At least, that was what they would call it, these feelings he’d had for Bucky since before he even knew to put a name to them, but it didn’t feel perverse.  There was something pure in the way he felt tucked up next to Bucky on cold nights, the comfortable way they moved around each other and shared space, dancing without dancing.

The men who made those standards were some of the same idiots who refused to take action while the Nazis were rising to power, the ones who wouldn’t stand up and fight to protect the people who couldn’t fight for themselves, so they weren’t infallible.  And it wasn’t like he wasn’t attracted to women, either.  Agent Carter -- Peggy -- was a goddess personified, taking the respect she deserved when it wasn’t given to her and battering through any obstacle in her way with a pigheaded stubbornness Steve could only admire.  He’d seen queer couples before, men so much braver than he was, fearlessly together at the automat or down near the clubs, refusing to carry the shame that people tried to force on them.  Those couples were never so blatant as to kiss in public, but the soft touches and tender glances they shared were enough to make Steve’s skin feel too tight and to send a hot rush of jealousy through him.  He wanted that kind of a relationship, the intimacy, not just the rush of physical release without affection.

The strength testing was when everything went wrong.  He breezed through a hundred pushups like they were nothing, not even breaking a sweat, which attracted the notice of the remaining techs.  The chatter around him continued when he moved over to the weight bench, growing louder and more excited as they loaded the weight bar down - first an extra fifty pounds, then a hundred, then more, until Steve was easily lifting three times his own body weight.  

“I think we have had a great deal more success than we first assumed,” Erskine said with a small, delighted smile.  “I just--”

The sound of a shot cut Erskine off, shatteringly loud as it echoed off the walls.  The smell of gunpowder washed over Steve, sharp and acrid, quickly replaced by a thick metallic copper, oddly sweet, that hung heavy in the back of his throat.  He reached out for the professor, horrified, as blood bloomed across the white of the doctor’s lab coat, brighter and richer than the sweater underneath.  (Danger, life, the heart of a fire…)

“HEIL HYDRA,” the tech yelled as he went to make his escape.

A second shot rang out from across the room, hitting the spy in the leg.   “Don’t just stand there,” Peggy shouted as she ran towards the spy.  “Stop him!”

Steve could no more disobey her command than he could force his heart to stop beating.  He was off like a shot, tracking the spy’s location by the scent of his blood as much as by sight.  Steve felt fast, strong, powerful, and moved with a predator’s liquid grace, closing the distance between him and the spy in a matter of seconds.  His body had never moved so well, completely in harmony save for the tell-tale tightness of his lungs.

_ The spy is there, just yards away, and Steve leaps for him.  The motion is perfect, and he knows before his feet even leave the ground that his prey has no chance of escape.  It feels so natural, the smooth arc through the air, the way he catches and subdues the spy, the tingle and pull as his fangs extend to feed, the rich rush of his prey’s blood down his throat and -- _

“WHAT THE HELL?!”  Steve shoved the body roughly away, scrambling back as he swiped his arm across his mouth.  The smear of blood was stark and vivid on his pale skin.  He should feel sick, nauseated, but possibly the worst part of this is how right it felt, still feels, how sated and content he felt when the blood he drank should be weighing him down like a stone.

Peggy made her way across the room and bent down to check the spy.  “He’s dead,” she said flatly, “which is unfortunate as I would have liked to ask him a few questions.”

“I didn’t mean to!  I was just...I went to tackle him, and the next thing I know I’m  _ growing fangs, _ and then I  _ drank his blood, _ and oh my god what happened to me what am I what did you DO?!”  The last was shouted in the general direction of Erskine’s corpse.  He knew it was a corpse, because he could feel it, just like he had felt when the spy’s heart had stopped, the way he knew the exact locations of the three other people in the room.  

He was shaking, gasping for air, and oddly it was the last that brought him back to himself.  The pressure on his chest and the dark ring around his vision as he struggled to breathe were a familiar touchstone in a body turned alien.

Steve leaned back and closed his eyes, pushing the horror and the trauma away so he could focus on his breathing.  In and out, slowly, in and out, don’t fight, ignore the pressure, the suffocation, the way each breath was a struggle.  In and out, slowly.  Hold back the panic, control the urge to gasp, in and out.

Once the worst of the attack had passed and he could breathe normally, he opened his eyes to take stock of the situation.  Peggy had taken charge, and both Erskine and the spy had been loaded onto gurneys.  The remaining techs moved around the room on her orders, but they all watched him as they gathered up files or made calls.  They were afraid.  Steve could practically taste it in the air, the rapid-fire clamor of their hearts beating faster than normal, the adrenaline coursing through their blood, the sheen of fear-sweat on their foreheads.

Peggy marched over when she noticed his eyes open.  “It appears we might not have been fully briefed on the serum's origins,” she said.  “While you were...distracted, I took the liberty of performing the usual tests for vampirism on you, holy water and silver.”

Vampirism.  Shit,  _ shit _ !  He hadn’t let himself put it together, hadn’t wanted to acknowledge the truth of what had been done to him, what he had unknowingly agreed to.  Steve could feel laughter bubbling up in his throat, hysteria held at bay by only his continued focus on breathing, in and out.  

She crouched down next to him, eyes warm and full of a compassion that didn’t grate like pity.  “They were negative, Steve, you didn’t react to either.  I don’t know what the serum did, but it didn’t make you a full vampire.”

“But, the  _ teeth, _ and the blood, and…”  Steve gestured broadly with one shaking hand, trying to encompass everything.

“It is troubling,” Peggy agreed, and wasn’t that just the understatement of the century.  “But it’s not the end of the world.”

The look Steve shot her was eloquent.  

“I haven’t any answers for you yet,” she continued, “but I plan to get them, and I need to take steps to ensure any other spies within the SSR are rather less successful with their missions.  Steve, do be good and try not to eat anybody until I get back.”

Steve just laughed as she walked away, because it was better than crying.

* * *

Steve was wheezing by the time he got back home, and he took a moment to recover before he opened the door, not wanting to worry Bucky.

He knew Bucky was home, though.  It sounded quiet and still inside the apartment, but Bucky was there, Steve was sure of it.  He tried to puzzle though how he knew.  It was...pomade and sweat and desire.  The desire was clearly all on Steve’s side, but he could smell Bucky, could make out that strong sure heartbeat he usually only knew during the coldest winter nights when they’d press close together under all their blankets.  There was something else too, beyond smell or hearing, beyond physical senses.  Some fundamental part of Steve had always been drawn to Bucky, but it was amplified now, made richer and fuller just like his ability to see.  Bucky had already been a goddamned beacon to him, and now that fucking serum had made it worse.

He sighed and pushed the door open, locking it behind him.  Bucky was slumped on the couch with his pants rolled up at the ankles and his feet resting in their soup pot, and he was sound asleep.

His heart might be stronger from the serum, but that didn’t stop it from lurching sideways like it always did when he caught sight of Bucky.  Steve watched the slow rise and fall of his chest, and the thrum of his pulse at his throat, and had to remind himself to breathe.  He’d gotten a little out of practice keeping everything contained while Bucky was away at boot camp, but he could fall back into the familiar pattern they’d always had, Steve secretly wanting from afar, and Bucky probably knowing and somehow forgiving him for it anyway.

Seeing him like this, fuck, his skin was warm and...

“Pink,” Bucky had told him once.  “Pink is the color of a kitten’s nose, or pale rose petals.  The color of a gentle kiss.”

“I ain’t never been kissed,” Steve had shot back, refusing to be embarrassed about it.

Bucky had shoved Steve’s shoulder and said, “Your ma kissed you just this morning, punk,” and they’d both laughed a little, for no good reason.

Bucky’s lips were the color of a gentle kiss, and Steve had still never been kissed, and Ma was gone and Bucky was all he had left.  Christ, he had to get a handle on this.

Bucky stirred and blinked, and his eyes were still reassuringly blue.  “Hey, you’re back.”

“Yeah.”

“Ugh, water’s all cold,” Bucky said, frowning down at his feet.

“Want me to heat it up for you?”

“Nah.”  Bucky grabbed the towel he’d set on the arm of the couch and started to dry his feet.  “Christ, you’ve been gone forever, I shoulda been out looking for you by now.”

Bucky had found Steve bleeding in a back alley or passed out at Mr. Shapiro’s deli more than once, so it wasn’t an idle comment.  The changes from the serum should be enough to keep it from happening again.  That was one bright side to a situation that didn’t seem to have many.  Steve sure as hell wouldn’t have wanted Bucky to see anything like what had happened at the lab.  He had scrubbed the blood off before he left, but it was like he could still feel it on his skin.  “Well, no need.  Here I am.”

Bucky grinned at him.  “Here you are.  How was your day?”   
  
“Oh, fine.  It was...fine.  You know.” _ I got experimented on, watched a very nice man die, and tore someone’s throat out with my teeth.  I can carry a hundred times more than I used to, but I still can’t walk five blocks without losing my breath, and I’m terrified about what it all means.  _  “I, uh, I guess I got a new job.  At that antique store that opened up last fall.”

“Yeah?  How do they manage to even stay in business?  Who’s buying fancy antique furniture?”

This was why Steve hated lying.  Not just the dishonesty of it, but the constant need for more stories.  “I dunno.  Rich people, I suppose.  The Rockefellers need chairs just like everybody else does.”

Bucky shrugged like the Rockefellers weren’t worth his time and finished drying his feet.  “You eat anything?”

It all came back to him, the rush of iron bright blood filling his mouth, the horrible thrill of power as the nameless man’s life ebbed, flowing into Steve.  He wasn’t sure he’d ever be hungry again.  “Uh.  Yeah.  I ate.  Did you?”

“Yeah,” Bucky lied.

Steve frowned and pointed toward the kitchen.  “Go eat.  You can have that can of peaches, and there’s still a heel of bread left.”

“You sure?  Those peaches’ll keep.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.  I told you, I got a job now.  I’ll have enough to keep us both in peaches until...”  Until Bucky got shipped off.  To the Pacific or Africa or Europe.  There wasn’t a safe place in the whole world right now, except maybe right here, and that was the one place Bucky definitely wouldn’t be.

Bucky ignored the gloom that had settled at Steve’s careless words and heaved himself to his feet, shuffling the three steps to the kitchen and pulling down the can of peaches.  Steve grabbed it from him and got out the can opener, hunching around it so Bucky couldn’t grab it away.  He looked so tired, like he always did after a day at the docks, and for once Steve wanted to be the one helping him, instead of the other way around.

They chatted quietly about nothing while Bucky ate, and Steve tried not to worry too much about whether he actually did have a job now.  He’d have to go back and find out, he decided, and he put it out of his mind.

The nights were turning chilly again, and when they got into the back room, Steve found that Bucky had already pushed their cots together.  They both changed, and Steve didn’t steal a single glance at Bucky as they did, and they settled in together under the covers.

“Night Stevie,” Bucky said, rolling and shifting so his back was pressed against Steve’s side.

Steve breathed in his scent, the warm wonderful presence of him.  “Night Buck.”

He spent most of the night wide awake, heart beating in sync with Bucky’s, trying to stop his head from echoing the word “vampire”.


	2. Chapter Two

The autumn air was crisp, but Steve sighed as he stepped inside the antique shop and escaped the baleful sunlight.  His skin was already pinking like he had spent all day outside in the middle of summer.

The young woman behind the counter didn’t look up from her typewriter as she said, “Wonderful weather this morning, isn’t it?”

Steve thought back and remembered what Peggy had said yesterday.  “Yes, but I always carry an umbrella.”

The receptionist looked up from her typewriter and gave him a once over, and her lips curved in a slow smile. “May I help you?”

That was...different.  Honestly, the only reason Steve recognized that kind of look was from all the times he’d seen it directed at Bucky.

“It would be my pleasure,” she added, a shocking pink rising on her cheeks as she licked her lips.

“Um.  I was here yesterday?  With Agent Carter and --” He hesitated to to mention Dr. Erskine.  “Is Agent Carter here?  Or maybe Mr. Stark?”

“Let me just...take you into the back.  And please, call me Lorraine.”  She reached up and brushed her fingertips over her pearl necklace, and when her hand fell away the top button of her blouse fell open.

Steve resolutely did not look.  Lorraine showed him to the hidden door, with a lot more hip movement than seemed strictly necessary, and he followed her down the corridor, trying not to notice she wasn’t wearing any stockings.  Of course she wasn’t.  Nylon was being rationed for the war effort, he knew that.  But he swore he could hear the soft brush of skin on skin as she shimmied along, just like he could almost hear the rise and fall of her chest as her breath turned quick and deep.

It didn’t help at all that she seemed to want him to notice.  She kept throwing looks over her shoulder at him.  It wasn’t something he’d ever had to deal with before.  

Steve tried to imagine what Bucky would do, and conjured the image of him knowingly raising an eyebrow and ever so slightly pursing his lips in a sultry pout.  He’d stalk closer, brush a hand over the small of their back, make a slightly off-color comment in a low intimate voice, his breath sweeping their neck as he chuckled.  It would be devastating, getting that kind of attention from him.  Irresistible.

And now _Steve’s_ breath was turning quick and deep, so he shut away all thoughts of Bucky Barnes and focused on the mission at hand.

Lorraine had slowed to a stop and half-turned, leaning back against the wall with her chin high, baring the pale sweep of her neck and staring at him with wide eyes, innocent, terrified, and aroused.

“What are you doing?” Steve asked, with the sort of charm that had earned him exactly zero dates.

It seemed to work in his favor for once.  She straightened and blinked at him.  “Oh.  I was just...Um...”

“Taking me to see Agent Carter,” Steve supplied, and she nodded.

“Right.  This way.”  She continued down the hall, throwing yet another look over her shoulder at him.

He couldn’t begin to imagine why she was acting like this.  Maybe she had lost someone special in the war, and she was torn with grief and loneliness?  That kind of sorrow could drive people to act strangely.  Steve was still recovering from losing his Ma, so he understood all too well.

A door at the end of the corridor flew open, and Howard Stark breezed through it, shouting behind him, “I need those numbers by noon.  Get cracking.”

“Mr. Stark,” Lorraine said as he approached, giving him a cool nod.

“Ah, Lorraine.  You finally give up on resisting my charms, doll?” Howard said, with a laugh in his voice and an appreciative glance at her legs.

“Not hardly,” she shot back, raising an eyebrow.

Howard grinned and turned to Steve.  “Well hello.  Who do we have here?”

“Steve Rogers, sir.  We met yesterday.”  He fought the urge to cross his arms protectively over his chest as Howard’s gaze crawled over every inch of him and ended up lingering on Steve’s lips.

“I remember meeting, but wow I must’ve been awfully distracted.  I seem to have missed some important details.”

“It’s about what happened yesterday.  With, um,” Steve glanced over at the receptionist, an anxious flick of his eyes.

“Of course, of course!  Why don’t you just step into my office and we can talk about it more.”  Howard draped one arm around his shoulders like Bucky would have done, but the fingers trailing down his arm and lingering suggestively made it abundantly clear this was not Bucky.

Howard was...unique.  Steve had only met him once, but he’d seen him in the papers, and the guy had a reputation for being over-the-top.  They made their way back to his office, pausing long enough for Howard to give Lorraine a little wave that made her pout.  

Once they were out of earshot, Steve said, “So, Agent Carter told you about the effects of the serum?”  

Howard opened his office door and led Steve inside, brushing his hand over Steve’s lower back.  “I’m a man of science, Steve.  I prefer to get results first hand.”

“Oh?”  He really hoped that didn’t mean he was supposed to bite someone.  Just thinking about it made him feel sick and fevered and ravenous.

The door closed, and Howard leaned back against it.  A slow smile spread over his face.  “You bet.  A thorough investigation is definitely called for.  Gotta get to know what makes that body of yours tick, right?”

“Uh.  I guess?  What I really need to know is if there’s some kind of compensation for all this?”

“Oh, I can promise it’ll be worth your time.”  Howard left his spot at the door and walked closer to Steve, much closer than he needed to in an office this big.  He sauntered past and sat in his big office chair, with his eyes still locked on Steve.

“Right.  Good.  I gotta pay rent and all.  So that’s important.  Is Agent Carter here?”

“Just us.”  Howard trailed his fingers over the inseam of his trousers.  “All alone.”

“She was trying to find more information.  About the possible effects of the serum  In case I’m...” He really didn’t want to say the word, but he didn’t see a way around it.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart.  Why don’t you come sit on my lap and we’ll figure it out together.”

“What?!”

“You are just the perfect mouthful, aren’t you?”  Howard was already walking over and reaching his hands out, and Steve didn’t have any more room to step back.

“STOP THAT!” he shouted, and the sound of it rolled heavily through the room.

Howard’s eyes looked glazed as he dropped his arms to his sides and froze in place.

“What the fuck is going on?!”

Steve didn’t expect an answer, but Howard said, “I wanted you to touch me.”

“What?  Why?”

“Because you’re beautiful.  Piercing blue eyes and golden hair and that gorgeous mouth.  Your hips would be just the right size for -- “

“Enough!”  It was so eerie, the way Howard was standing there staring.  “Is this a vampire thing?”

Howard tilted his head and looked a lot more like himself.  “We’ve never been able to study one before.  They always manage to escape when we capture them.  The notes say they turn to smoke but that’s gotta be bullshit, right?  Can you turn to smoke?  I could breathe you right in.  Take you inside me.  Let --”

“No!  Ugh, breathe me in?  That’s disgusting.  Where is Agent Carter?”  

“Probably in Erskine’s lab.  I’ll show you.”  Howard rushed to the door and out into the hallway.  He waited there, staring at Steve, eager to please.

Steve followed, though he stayed a few steps behind the whole way.

They found Peggy set up at a conference table, surrounded by pages of notes and diagrams.  She didn’t look particularly happy.

Howard scooped up a page, dense with chemical symbols, and let out a low whistle.  “I’m not even sure what I’m looking at here, and do you know how unusual that is?  I am a literal genius, nothing goes over my head.  This...this doesn’t even make sense.  This right here, this isn’t any kind of symbol I recognize.  What the hell was that man up to?”

Peggy frowned.  “Not at all what we thought, I’ve been able to decipher that much.  At least half of this is in code, and I’m pretty sure most of what we’d need to really understand what Doctor Erskine was doing never existed anywhere outside his own head.”

“Secretive, a man after my own heart,” Howard said as he traced his finger over another diagram.

Steve’s impatience finally got the better of him.  “So can you tell me what he did to me or what?  Can you fix it?”

Peggy shook her head, almost a reflex.  “Doctor Erskine told us that he was working on a formula designed to maximize human potential, something that would combine the strength of a weightlifter and the speed of a sprinter and the endurance of a marathoner into a single body, along with the ability to heal quickly from almost any injury.  But he neglected to inform us that one of the key ingredients of his formula was vampire blood.”

Steve let out a choked noise, almost a sob, but Peggy continued on like she hadn’t heard him.

“He wrote in his notes that he was close to finding a way to imbue a human body with all the superior physical aspects of a vampire, but none of the weaknesses of the species.  He also seemed convinced he had found the key to, and I quote, ‘allow human heart and courage to reign supreme over predator instinct’, but it appears he may have miscalculated things slightly.”

Howard’s laugh cut her off.  “Sounds like he might have missed the mark on that one or we wouldn’t have had that unpleasantness yesterday with my little bloodsucking chickadee here.”

“Mr. Stark!”  Steve’s voice was high-pitched and strangled, and he felt the panic start clawing at his brain again.

“Howard, you’re not helping.  Do sit down, shut up, and see if you can see anything I’ve missed.  Steve, you might want to sit down for this.”

Steve sat roughly and dropped his head onto the table.  “That sounds ominous.”

“Oh buck up, Steven, it can’t be as bad as all that,” Peggy said with a small frown.  “You’re as strong as a horse now, and so far the only detrimental effect we’ve observed was the unpleasantness yesterday.”

“Says you,” Steve shot back, sitting up properly, the way his ma had taught him.  “I can’t seem to stop smelling people, I can actually hear heartbeats, and then this morning…”  He trailed off, not sure how he should describe what happened with Lorraine and again with Howard.

Luckily Howard had no such reservations.  “This little minx walked in here looking positively edible, and I couldn’t keep my hands off of him.  I mean, restraint is hardly my middle name, but usually I have more control than that.”

Steve could feel his face burning.  “MISTER STARK!  You can’t … I mean … I …”  

Peggy cut him off before he could figure out what he was even trying to say.  “Howard, don’t be more of a pig than you have to be, and do recall that the authorities allow you liberties most people cannot rely on.  There are stories about vampiric thrall, of course, but we’ve never been able to get any kind of confirmation.  Steven, who else has shown unnatural interest in you?”

The flush in his face hadn’t faded, not even a little.  Mentioning that anyone showing any interest in him was unnatural probably wasn’t the right response either.  “Um, I didn’t really spent any time around anyone except my...Bucky, my roommate, but he seemed fine.  Just...Lorraine, at the front desk, and Mister Stark, and they both stopped when I told them to.”

Howard laughed again.  “Stopped in my tracks more like, it was like being hit with a train.  He told me to stop and it was like my brain shut off.”  He looked up from the papers then with a little frown.  “Huh.  I don’t know if I like that.”

“It could prove to be extremely useful,” Peggy said with a thoughtful tap of red nail against red lips.  Steve found that he couldn’t look away, the color just as hypnotic as it had been the previous day.  “I wonder...is it something you can control?”

Steve’s lips twisted into a wry smile.  “It wasn’t even something I knew I could do until ten minutes ago.”

Her eyes narrowed.  “Were you trying to attract attention?”

“No!  Definitely not,” Steve said with an emphatic shake of his head.  “It just...happened…”

“Right then.  Go on, try it on me.”

“You want me to try to...control…”  Steve’s words sputtered off there, as did his brain.  He may have had some experience keeping his cool around intimidatingly attractive brunettes, but it had never translated into any kind of charm.  

Peggy stood up and walked over to Steve, who was awkwardly fiddling with the cuffs of his shirt.  “Rogers.  Steven.  I cannot imagine how difficult this must be for you right now, but there is a war on and we have a job to do.  Right now that job is to discover the capabilities and limits of your transformation, and then determine how we can best put those capabilities to work to save as many lives as possible.”  Her eyes gentled, the briefest crack in her tough facade.  “Doctor Erskine saw something in you, something great, and I don’t think he was wrong.”

She was right, of course she was right.  Steve may have only known her for a few days, but he had already seen enough to know she was smart, savvy, and very rarely wrong.  He nodded, and closed his eyes to gather himself and focus.

When he opened them again, he locked his eyes on hers.  “Sit down,” he commanded.

Nothing happened.

“Well, that was a bit of a disappointment,” Peggy said with a small frown.  “Try it again, with more force or will or something.”

Steve nodded before steeling himself to try again.  “Sit down,” he repeated, and he could feel the force in his words even though the tone was soft, could feel the command reaching out.

Peggy again didn’t move, but there was a thump and muffled curse from across the room.  They both turned to see Howard on the floor, a flurry of papers surrounding him.

“I was already sitting down,” he yelled, throwing his hands up and adding the papers he was holding to the general mess.  “I was actually literally already sitting down, you weren’t even talking to me, and yet you somehow managed to make me sit down even more.”  Howard stalked around the table to Steve, a dangerous gleam in his eyes.

“We have to figure this out, I need to understand how it works.  Peggy, Pegs, _Maggie_ , how are you still standing?  He wasn’t even looking at me and I still couldn’t control myself!”

“Howard, if you call me Maggie one more time I shall be forced to ensure you never speak again,” Peggy said in response.  “But I didn’t feel a thing.  Not the tiniest bit of compulsion.”

“Rogers, write that down.  It’s time to experiment!”  

 

* * *

 

It was a very, very long day.

They tested the thrall, first on Peggy and Howard, and then on two agents who Peggy deemed less of a potential risk than any of the others.  He expected Lorraine to be brought in, too, but when Howard suggested it, Peggy glared at him.  It got easier to control the more Steve worked at it, although he never managed to influence Peggy enough to make her move.

“I could feel something that time,” she said at one point, “just the ghost of the idea that I should do as you said.  Easy enough to ignore.”

He didn’t tell her that he’d been thinking about her lips at the time.  He wasn’t _sure_ it was relevant.

“Easy, _ha_ ,” Howard grumbled.  “I wish we had a real vampire to compare this to.  Did the serum make it stronger, or weaker?  We could try using Steve to train troops to be resistant to the thrall, but if natural vampires are stronger than Steve that won’t gain us much.”

“I’m not convinced that’s the best use of Steve’s abilities,” Peggy countered.  “What few reports we’ve been able to get from the front make it clear that the vampires are being used by Hydra as killing machines.”

Howard shook his head.  “That we know of, you mean.  What if they’re doing both - vampiric killing machines, but also spies acting under thrall?”

“They’d have the perfect cover,” Peggy said in a rush.  “Perfect, because they wouldn’t even necessarily know they were spying.”

“I don’t think it works like that,” Steve responded.  “It doesn’t feel like I could hold someone who wasn’t actually in front of me.  At least, I don’t think I could,” he said with a small frown.

“We’ll worry about that later,” Howard said with a smirk.  “For now, we’ve been neglecting the elephant in the room.”

 

* * *

 

Blood.  He was talking about blood, of course he was.  Steve looked at the vial sitting on the table in front of him with distaste.  It was still cold from the icebox, but even with the oppressive heat in the room it wasn’t any more appealing.  

“I don’t want to drink that,” Steve said with a grimace.  “It doesn’t even sound good.”

“This is for science, Stevie-baby!  Chug it down, if you don’t like it we’ve got something warmer for a chaser.”

“Howard, this is a terrible idea,” Peggy said with a frown.  “I think we should consider our options more carefully instead of rushing ahead like fools.”

“You stick to shooting people, Pegs, and let me handle the science.  Drink it, Steve.”

Steve grimaced before twisting off the lid and tossing it down.  It was worse than it looked, cold and heavy and he swore he could feel it crawling down his throat.  It was all he could do to keep from vomiting right there on the table.

Howard was up in his face in seconds, sticking his fingers in Steve’s mouth.  “Lemme see those fangs, I want to figure out how they work.  I mean, do they retract?  Are they hollow?  The mechanics don’t make any sense, your teeth looked completely normal earlier, but yesterday’s corpse clearly says otherwise.”  He poked around some more before Steve finally shoved him off.

“That was awful and I’m never doing it again,” Steve said, still trying to control the heaving of his stomach.  “Ugh, I can’t even describe it,” he continued with a grimace.

“Well, try,” Howard said as he grabbed a pen, leaning forward avidly.  There were faint bloodstains on his fingers, and Steve shuddered in revulsion.

“It was...cold.  And I don’t mean the temperature, it was like it was dead.  There wasn’t any...energy?  Power?  I don’t know.  It was just wrong,” Steve said with a grimace.  

“Iiiinteresting,” Howard said, eyes alight.

“Quite,” Peggy said.  “There were theories, of course, that it isn’t blood itself that vampires needed, but the life it represents, a sort of symbolic transfer of power, and this certainly seems to support that.”

"Supports it but doesn’t prove it,” Howard said in a rush.  “Is the blood dead because it’s been out of the donor for too long?  If we were to draw blood from someone and have Steve drink it immediately from a container instead of a host would it make a difference?  Or does it have to be directly from the host itself?”

Peggy turned so she was facing Howard directly.  “I know exactly what you’re thinking, Howard, and no.  Who exactly are you going to get to volunteer for this idiotic experiment?  Do we have the Colonel bring us a prisoner?  Do we risk one of our fellow agents?  Absolutely not!”

“Pegs, we have to.  We have to get a handle on this, understand it, not just so we can figure out how to best use Steve, but so we can understand the limits of the vampires themselves.  They’re butchering us out on the front, and…”

The argument continued, but Steve tuned them out, focused more on trying to keep his stomach settled than what they were saying.  The cold blood had triggered something, an awareness of himself, the way his own blood flowed through his veins, the beating of his heart, the rush of heat and power that accompanied each beat.  It was mesmerizing, hypnotic, and he lost himself in the rhythmic rush until he was pulled back to reality by something else.

Peggy and Howard had moved, were facing each other now, faces flushed and both breathing heavily, but that wasn’t what caught Steve’s attention.  That was fixed on the knife in Howard’s hand, blade gleaming, and the vivid scarlet of blood, slowly tracing its way down his forearm from his wrist.  Steve watched as it made its way farther down Howard’s arm, wrapped around the side, and gathered, pooling and beading until it was almost ready to drip.

Before the drop of blood could fall, Steve had crossed the room in a blur, fangs extending with anticipation.  

_His prey is injured, weak, his to feed on and control.  He bites down, enjoying the heat, the rush, the power, the moans of his prey as he extends a touch of the thrall to increase the prey’s pleasure, make it more susceptible in the future.  He bites a second time, harder, for the sheer joy of it, glorying in the strangled shout it causes._

A sharp crack, a bright flash of pain on the back of his skull brought him back to himself.  

“Back off, Steve,” Peggy said, eyes dangerous as she leveled her pistol at him.  

Steve was pretty sure he could see some of his hairs caught on the barrel.  His grip tightened on Howard’s arm, instincts screaming the prey was _his_ , that he could kill the interloper before she could harm him.  Her heart was pounding, but her hands were steady, he couldn’t smell any fear on her, none at all.

With a gasp he shoved Howard away and took several steps to distance himself from both of them, breathing hard as he worked to bring himself back under control.  Once he felt his fangs retract, he turned to Howard, eyes flashing.  “What the hell were you thinking,” he ground out between clenched teeth.

Howard shrugged.  “Right now, I’m thinking I need to change my pants.  Whatever you did there?  Felt really, really good.  Seriously, if you want to do that again sometime I’m game.”

Steve didn’t say anything to that, because he wasn’t sure he could trust himself to respond without yelling.  Luckily, Peggy seemed to have no problems on that account.

“That was the most idiotic, stupid, dangerous stunt I have ever seen in my life, and I spent eight years in boarding school,” she said, shoulders back and spine like iron.  “You could have gotten both of us killed.  All three of us, because you can be damn sure that the SSR wouldn’t have let Steve live if he had killed us.”

Howard shrugged.  “We don’t even know if he can die.  And, neither of us died, and we know more than we did before, so hey!  We all win here.”

“What the hell could that have possibly taught you?” Steve shouted, losing the battle with himself.  

Howard held up a finger.  “First, that you can feed without killing your victim.  Second, that you use your thrall while feeding.  Third, that you can heal wounds with your mouth.  Fourth…”

Steve interrupted.  “ _Heal_ wounds?  What are you talking about?”

Howard held out his forearm and used his other hand to flake away some of the dried blood.  “Look.  I’m bruised where you bit down, but the cut?  Totally gone, no puncture wounds, I’m one hundred percent non-leaky.”

“Huh,” Steve said in response as he inspected Howard’s arm.  It was true, the original cut and both bite marks were completely healed, nothing to indicate they had ever been there but a purpling ring of bruises.

“And fourth,” Howard said with a smirk, “fourth is my favorite.  Fourth, we learned that while you can make me do things I don’t want to do?  I can do the same thing to you.”

Howard’s nose made a satisfying crunch when Steve’s fist hit it.

 

* * *

 

“You need to work on your form,” Peggy told him later that day.  “You’ll break your fingers punching like that.”

“I’ve done pretty well so far,” Steve shot back, feeling stung.

Peggy looked him over, red lips turned up into a small but distinctly approving smile.  “So you have.  Still, you could do better.  Tomorrow you’re meeting me in the gym, Nazis are more of a challenge than your average Stark.”


	3. Chapter Three

Steve felt exhausted as he trudged up the steps to their apartment, the kind of tired that settles in your bones and weighs you down like lead.  It had been a long and frustrating day, and other than reading through what felt like thousands of pages of notes and files it didn’t feel like they had accomplished anything, or learned much more than they had known yesterday.

The rich, heady smell of bacon cooking was a familiar one, but it wasn’t one he was used to smelling from his own apartment.

The sight of Bucky at their stove was enough to send his heart fluttering into his throat.  He was always beautiful, but it was the sight of him like this, barefoot and relaxed, that Steve treasured the most.  Nobody else got to see Bucky like this, only Steve.

“What’s all this?” Steve asked, trying to keep his voice level.  He didn’t know if it was a side-effect of the serum, but it was getting harder and harder to keep his feelings in check.  There was no way he could ask Howard or Peggy, no matter what they may have said about sharing any and all changes he might experience - they’d want to know details, and this wasn’t something he was willing to share.

Bucky grinned, wide and carefree, and Steve had never been so in love.  “Bacon and beans!  I got a discount at the butcher on account of the uniform, figured I should treat you since you’ve been hard at work all day.”

Steve snorted.  “Yea, I was working hard all right.  Sorting receipts and filing papers all day.”

“They’re not making you work in some dusty stockroom are they?”  Bucky frowned a little, the crease between his eyes deepening.  “You know how dust ain’t good for you.”

“I can take care of myself, Buck,” Steve said, feeling stung.  His asthma was a sore point, one that had only gotten more tender when it appeared to be the only one of his health problems the serum hadn’t fixed.

“I know you can, but you know what an old worrywort I am.”

“Worse than my ma ever was,” Steve responded, softening.  They only had a few days together, and then Bucky was going to be off where Steve couldn’t follow, couldn’t watch his back.

If he died out there where Steve couldn’t keep him safe...

“You know it.”  Bucky stepped closer, right up into Steve’s space, and frowned a little.  He brushed one thumb across Steve’s cheekbone, a velvet caress that was almost enough to make Steve moan.  “I’m not sure how you managed it working indoors, but your skin’s burned worse than that one time we went to Coney Island.”

Steve laughed weakly.  “Must’ve been sitting right in the sun, I didn’t even notice.”

“Hang on, I’m going to see if Miz Mulligan has some buttermilk we can put on that.  Can’t have my best pal suffering!”

Bucky was gone like a flash, taking all the warmth in the room with him.  It was all Steve could do to walk over to the couch instead of follow, to collapse with his head in his hands instead of reaching out and grabbing for what he really wanted instead.

When Bucky came back, it was to torture Steve.  At least it felt like torture with him so close, scent surrounding Steve while his hands brushed a rag soaked in buttermilk across the skin of Steve’s face with something Steve tried not to see as tenderness.  They were pals --  _ best _ pals -- and that was all, no matter how much Steve might want.

“There,” Bucky said with a satisfied grin.  “You just set there and let that work its magic and I’ll get you some’a this delicious grub.  I used Ma Barnes’ secret recipe!”

Steve smirked.  “Your ma’s secret is to add some basil.  You probably just snatched some from Old Man Moretti’s balcony.”

Bucky gasped in false horror.  “Steven Grant Rogers!  I cannot believe you, blabbin’ about important family secrets like that after I slaved over this here gourmet meal.”

“We eat beans four nights a week, Buck.”

“Yea,” Bucky agreed, “but not with bacon.  Bacon means they’re special.”

‘You make everything special,’ Steve thought, but he was well-practiced in the art of keeping those words quiet, chained silent in his throat and caged by his teeth.  “Yea, okay,” is what he said out loud.

He tried, he really did, but as delicious as the beans were (rich with fat, almost overwhelming with the flavors of garlic and onion and basil), he wasn’t all that hungry and could only handle a couple of bites.  

(He wasn’t going to think about why he wasn’t hungry, or the tingling in his teeth, or the way he could hear Bucky’s heartbeat from across the room.)

Bucky frowned when he saw Steve push the bowl away.  “You’re not getting sick on me again, are you?  You felt a little warm earlier, but I thought it was just the sunburn.”

“Nah,” Steve said with a little laugh.  “My new boss bought me lunch, so I’m not as hungry as I thought.”

‘Bought him lunch,’ Jesus.  That was one way to look at it.

“You sure?  We’ve got plenty, don’t you go doing that thing where you pretend you don’t need to eat on account of being smaller.”

Steve smiled.  “No, really, I couldn’t eat another bite.  They’ll keep, though, and I’ll make sure to save room tomorrow.”  He was going to say more, but ended up yawning instead.

“Long day, huh?  Let’s turn in early then, make sure you’re all rested up for another day tomorrow.”

“You’re not my ma, Buck,” Steve said with a little frown, but there was no heat behind his words.

They moved around each other as they got ready for bed, effortless and comfortable.  It was Steve’s favorite part of the day, and he let the anticipation build as they brushed their teeth and stripped down to undershirts and shorts.

Steve slid into bed and moved up against the wall, leaving room for Bucky.  Bucky followed as he always did, laying next to Steve and stretching out, relaxed and peaceful and so beautiful it hurt.

Cocooned in warmth and home and Bucky’s scent, it was the first time since he had been injected with the serum that Steve felt like maybe everything was going to be okay.

Steve woke up slowly, feeling more content than he could recall ever feeling before.  He shifted slowly, and then rolled his hips, grinding against the mattress to chase the last traces of his dream.  It was warm and inviting, and it flexed back against him, as if --

Steve’s eyes flew open.  He usually woke up on his stomach, arms wrapped around his pillow, but today he was on his side, pressed tight against Bucky’s back.

Bucky’s breath hitched, and Steve could hear his heart racing.  Could feel it too, in the hand he had locked around Bucky’s waist, and also fluttering against his lips, pressed against the side of Bucky’s neck.  His fangs were extended, but not with the overwhelming desire to hunt and hurt and kill that had accompanied them the last time.  This felt more like a claiming, like homecoming.  He hadn’t broken the skin yet, had only tasted the rich heat of it, but the threat and promise were both there.  Steve’s other hand was locked in Bucky’s hair, tight enough that Bucky’s back was bowed.  The scent of arousal was thick in the air, and Bucky’s breath caught again, unnaturally loud in the early-morning silence.

“Jesus!”  Steve came back to himself in a rush, pushing Bucky away and knocking him right out of bed.

Bucky looked up at him, eyes wide and shocked.  “What’d you have to go and do that for?”

“I...uh...”  Steve stammered, trying to find the words to explain, to make this okay, to guarantee Bucky wouldn’t hate him, wouldn’t leave.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay Stevie,” Bucky said with a small, sad smile.  “Musta been some dream you were having there.  That’s just like you, starting fights when you ain’t even awake.  Can’t let the bullies alone, even when you’re sleeping.  Lemme go fry up the last of that bacon before you’ve got to be at work.”

Steve’s breathing evened out, and he sagged against the wall in relief as Bucky padded out of the room.  Bucky didn’t hate him, Bucky didn’t realize what he had almost done.  His secret -- secrets -- were still safe.

 

* * *

 

Going to the movies by himself while Bucky made the rounds, saying goodbye to his whole huge family, seemed like a good idea at the time.  It wasn’t like he’d have Bucky around anymore, after today, he may as well get used to it.

But as the movie started, some asshole ran his mouth.  He shut up when Steve told him to, the power of the thrall had some advantages after all, but he’d already said enough.

Bucky was shipping out, and Steve didn’t have any kind of magic powers that could even slow it down, let alone stop it from happening.

The fight was important, Steve knew that.  Hell he’d argued with Mr. Shapiro over and over about how they should have gone to war sooner.  He still knew it was true.

God, he didn’t want Bucky to go, though.  Not without him.

When the movie ended, Steve went outside and blinked.  All the bright shiny colors of the world seemed inappropriate today.  He wanted to go back, to when pink was just a word Bucky had described for him, instead of the lips he could never touch.  To when red meant the vague idea of a bloody death, instead of an all too real possibility for the person he cared about the most.

Steve trudged along, keeping his head down and his collar up, trying to hide his skin from the inconsiderate sun, which insisted on shining when the sky should be gray.  

“Jesus, was the show that bad?” said a voice behind him.  Steve’s favorite voice.

As he turned to see Bucky, something plopped down onto his head.  He swiped it off and looked it over.  It was an old-fashioned straw boater hat, with a bright blue ribbon patterned with white stars.

Bucky tugged it away and dropped it on Steve’s head again, giving it a little tilt to one side.  “There.  Can’t let my best pal get roasted all the time.  Nobody’d be able to tell when you’re blushing, and wouldn’t that be a shame.”

“Shut up,” Steve said, giving Bucky a light shove, but he couldn’t help smiling back as Bucky grinned at him.  “Keep talking like that, I’ll want to be sunburned all the time.”

Bucky shook his head and threw an arm around Steve’s shoulders.  “Nope.  That Irish skin is part of your charm.  Gotta keep it safe.  I’m trusting you to make sure the girls stay entertained after...while I’m away.”

Bucky’s heartbeat had picked up its pace as he’d pulled Steve close, like he was just as worried about Steve taking care of himself at home as Steve was about Bucky facing bullets and mortar fire.

“So, where are you off to now?  Got more people to visit?”

“I just thought I’d head home, see if...”  Bucky used his free hand to rub at the back of his neck.  “Maybe you’d draw something, for me to take with me?”

He wished he had some funny comeback, some way to keep things light and cheerful.  He felt like he owed Bucky that much, at least.  But, as usual, he could never pay what he owed Bucky, and he only said, “Sure.  Anything you want, I’ll draw it.”

They made their way home, and Steve drew for the rest of the day, the serum keeping his hand from cramping or getting tired.  He sent Bucky off with a stack of sketches, of everything from his mother’s face to the stray cat that sometimes climbed onto their balcony to the view from Bucky’s spot on the couch.  Steve even did one of himself, while Bucky held up his shaving mirror and insisted that Steve’s face was at least as important as the kitchen table.

The next morning, Steve woke up alone and shivering.

Bucky probably hadn’t left the country yet.  Everybody knew loose lips sink ships, but that didn’t stop the rumors and the stories.  Word had it soldiers sometimes waited weeks before getting on those transport ships.

Weeks.  Plenty of time to find Bucky and...

And what?  Stow away in his foot locker?  Hide in his rucksack?  

He pushed the thought aside and got dressed.  

 

* * *

 

The weeks slipped by, full of Howard’s tests and Peggy’s lessons, and there was no upside to Bucky shipping out.  Sure, it meant Steve didn’t need to spin tales about his new job, and there was nobody to notice he got burned by the slightest touch of sun, or hardly ate food anymore.  But Steve would’ve given anything to be by Bucky’s side, instead of back here all alone.

He hesitated before he went out the door, choosing between the pain of the sun burning his skin and --

He pulled on the hat Bucky had given him and left.

As soon as he stepped into the antique store he knew something had changed.  There was a heady sense of excitement in the air, evident in the flush of heat on Lorraine’s cheeks as she waved him through to the secret door, and the slightly quickened pulse of the technician he passed on the way to Peggy’s office.

He knocked, and Peggy called for him to come in.  Her skin looked warmer than usual as she smiled over at him.

“Big news?” he asked, before she said anything.

She narrowed her eyes at him, playfully annoyed.  “A lady likes to be able to have secrets, Steven.”

“I’m sure she does,” he said, trying to match her tone.  “But what’s going on?”

“We’ve been given our orders!  We’re shipping out to England!”


	4. Chapter Four

The trip across the ocean was uneventful.

Except --

_ Steve can taste the terror hanging in the air as the storm rages and howls, the whole world seeming to lurch and shift on the waves.  All around him are soldiers, their skin lit with the heat of dread as they swing in their hammocks, no control over their fates, nothing to protect them.  Steve clenches his teeth, pushing back the burn of fangs that ache to emerge, pushing back the overwhelming desire feed, so powerfully awakened by the heady aroma of fear.   _

As soon as the weather eased a bit, Steve bolted up to Howard’s cabin, chased by calls of warning that this was only the eye of the storm.

He pounded on the door, and Howard opened it almost immediately.  

“Something wrong, sugarplum?” Howard said, ushering Steve into the room and closing the door behind them.  “You’re all out of breath.”

“Mr. Stark, I -- The storm.  Everyone’s afraid and it -- Ugh, it made me want --”

Howard nodded thoughtfully.  And started to roll up his sleeve.

Oh.  Oh god, no.  Steve wasn’t even sure if Howard was in his right mind, had no idea if the thrall was slipping out of his control.  “Fuck.  Nevermind.  Just...You stay here.  For five minutes.  And don’t -- Don’t bleed or anything.”

Steve scrambled out of the room, leaving Howard staring forlornly after him.

Peggy.  Peggy can help, he told himself as he made his way to her cabin, keeping his feet despite the tossing of the ship.  Peggy can distract him, won’t fall prey to the thrall that keeps reaching out despite his best attempts to keep it leashed.  Controlling it was almost second nature now, except in times like this, when he hadn’t fed for almost a week, and everyone’s emotions were heightened, and his prey -- no, not prey,  _ people, _ soldiers -- were crammed in like sardines.

Within minutes he found himself in front of her cabin door.  Steve raised his hand to knock, when the sound of two heartbeats, two voices, caught his attention.

Oh hell, he forgot Peggy shared her cabin with Private Lorraine.  And Lorraine, while also SSR, wasn’t fully briefed on the extent of what Erskine’s serum had done.

He stood there, paralyzed with indecision, when the muffled voices behind the door suddenly sounded clearer, like someone had turned the dial on a radio.

“Well, you’ve been spending an awful lot of time with him.  It’s suspicious is all.”  That was Private Lorraine.

“There’s absolutely nothing suspicious about it.  I’m training him for field missions and covert operations.”  That was Peggy, which meant they had to be talking about him?

“The sort of covert operations that leave you coming back here out of breath and sweaty, sure.”

“Oh for -- Lorraine, we were sparring, and he’s stronger than he looks.”

“Sure he is.  If you were going to go play tickle-tail with someone else, ‘least you could do was invite me along.  He is a tasty little dish.”

Steve could feel his whole body going red.  She hadn’t just --

“It’s not like that.   _ I’m _ not like that, you know that better than anyone.”

“How did I get so lucky?  Dozens of temperamental ladies in uniform just gasping to have a gay old time with you, and I’m the only one you ever took up with.”

“I suppose we spent so much time together you simply wore me down.  I haven’t done anything like that with Steve, I wouldn’t without talking to you first.”

“...Well.  That’s an awfully big shame, I think he’d be fun to take a ride on.  But you’re probably right, I’m not sure he could handle both of us.”

The noises that followed made it clear no further conversation was forthcoming, and that Peggy likely wouldn’t be much use distracting him from the urge to feed.

Steve couldn’t move, torn between what his instincts were telling him to do --  _ go in there, bring them both under the thrall, feed _ \-- and doing absolutely anything else.  In the end, the manners his mother drilled into him won, and he ran off, light on his feet, fangs burning almost as much as the arousal in his blood.

An ill-fated rat fed the hunger, and its foul taste made it easier to fight the lingering pull of fear and arousal when he returned to his bunk, but it still wasn’t enough.  He rummaged through his duffel and brought out an old shirt.   _ Bucky’s _ shirt, left behind in a lonely corner of the closet when he’d packed everything away.  The only thing he had left of him.

_ He buries his nose in Bucky’s scent, losing himself in a different kind of hunger, a safer kind of want.  His feelings for Bucky are the cleanest, purest thing he knows.  They’re his salvation, the one thing he can trust.  He’s in love with Bucky Barnes.  Always has been, always will be. _

 

* * *

 

He didn’t get to see England, just a brief flash out the window of a truck as they rode from the port to the airstrip, and then from there they flew over to France.

As they loaded their gear into yet another truck, Peggy hurriedly told him to get into uniform before she moved on to other bits of equipment that needed to be organized.  

The clothes she had shoved at him were snug, but easy enough to move in.  Maybe a little flashy, but he figured he’d mostly be working at night.  

It wasn’t until they arrived at the camp and were hauled in front of an entire unit of soldiers that Steve felt truly uncomfortable in his new uniform.  At least he’d kept his khaki trousers on, instead of the clingy blue tights it came with.  But the big white star on his chest and the red and white stripes down his belly weren’t exactly standard issue.  After a lifetime of being overlooked, this was not the way he’d hoped to be noticed.

“Listen up!” said Colonel Phillips.  “This is our SSR liaison, Agent Carter.  You will show her your full respect.  You know what we’re up against out there, and she’s our best shot at taking those fanged Nazi bastards out and keeping our asses alive.”  He gave a warning glare to the assembled men, and waved a hand at Steve.  “And this is our new mascot that the brass, in all their infinite wisdom, decided we needed.  He’ll be assisting Agent Carter with intelligence analysis and codebreaking.  Try to keep them from getting killed, I don’t want to deal with the paperwork.  Dismissed.”

“Mascot?!” Steve hissed at Peggy, who sure as hell hadn’t mentioned that aspect of their cover story.  She pretended not to hear him.

Or maybe she was distracted by all the laughing.   

Steve pulled his hat further down over his eyes and ground his teeth.  

“Hey, can it!” said a very familiar voice.  

Steve snapped his head up.

Bucky.  

It really was Bucky, not just an illusion of everything Steve most wanted to see.  He was barreling through the crowd, making his way to Steve.  A huge man was laughing louder than all the others, and Bucky didn’t even slow down as he thwapped him, knocking the bowler right off his head.

“What the hell, Sarge?” the guy asked, but he wasn’t laughing anymore.  In fact, a ripple of quiet seemed to spread out from around him.

Bucky plowed on and shouted, “Steve!  Holy shit, Hitler doesn’t stand a chance now!”

As soon as he was close enough, Steve punched him in the arm.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Bucky asked, too quietly for anyone else to hear.

“Couldn’t let you go off by yourself,” Steve said.  “Looks like they sent all the stupid overseas.”

“I can’t say you’re not a sight for sore eyes, pal, but couldn’t you have stayed at home where it was safe?”  

“Of course I couldn’t,” Steve said.  “Not with you over here getting into trouble without me to watch your back.”

“Boy howdy, you’re going to manage to start a fight with a nest of Jerries in the mess hall, and I’m going to have to drag your tail out of it, ain’t I?” Bucky said with a crooked grin.

Steve just laughed, and it was such a Bucky thing to say, and such a relief to have Bucky there in front of him, smelling like sweat and tobacco and desire, that Steve forgot for a second to pull his punch all the way.  It hit Bucky’s shoulder with a dull thud and sent him staggering back.  

“Ow,” Bucky said as he rubbed at his shoulder.  “I guess you have gotten some time in at the gym, killer!”

“I, uh … I got some hand-to-hand training with the SSR, managed to put on a little more muscle I guess.”

“Well, it ain’t bootcamp, so I’m still glad you’re not going to be out there on the front lines.”  Bucky draped his arm across Steve’s shoulder and led him over to a smaller group.  “Steve, these are the boys.  Boys, this is Steve.”  There was a general chorus of hellos, and more than a few curious looks.  

“It’s bad out here, Stevie,” Bucky continued, sounding a hundred years older.  “It’s not just the Jerries, they’ve got something else out there too.”  His voice trailed off as his eyes stared off into the distance.

“What is it,” Steve asked, horribly afraid he knew the answer.

Bucky laughed again, but it was a joyless sound, and he dropped his arm from around Steve’s shoulders.  “I’m not sure you’d believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”  Steve frowned as he turned to Bucky.  “You ain’t never kept secrets from me before, now’s not the time to start.  Not when it’s your life we’re talking about.”

“No secrets, right.  Okay then.”  Bucky took a deep breath, steeling himself to continue.  “There are monsters out there, Stevie.  Monsters in the night.  I ain’t seen one, but I’ve seen what they leave behind.  Just bodies.  No noise, no warning, just death where they were, soldiers with their throats torn out or ripped all to pieces.”

“Bodies completely white, totally drained of blood,” someone else interjected.

“I know it sounds crazy, but people are saying they’re vampires,” Bucky told Steve, voice quiet.  “Horrible monsters, like old Miz Alma used to tell us about, straight outta your nightmares.”

And that -- hell, that hurt.  Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing he couldn’t tell Bucky what had happened, what he was now.

The big guy, the one Bucky had smacked in the head earlier, said, “Gabe, you saw one, right?  What’d it look like?”

“I told you, I don’t want to talk about it, Dugan,” said a handsome dark-skinned man.  He was frowning down at the book he was holding.  Steve initially thought it was a sketchbook, until he saw that the pages were lined and covered in writing.

Bucky patted Gabe’s shoulder.  “You don’t gotta tell it.  Just, you said earlier they were all pale, right?  Like they were half dead?”

“No, that’s --”  Gabe looked up at the sky and took a deep breath before he went on.  “Back when I was a kid, there was a lady who went missing.  Miss Lucy.  She’d been gone a few days, and things were getting ugly.  Wouldn’t be long before the sheets and torches came out, you know?”

He glanced around at them, and sighed when he only got wide stares in return.  “Anyway, we all joined in for the search, even those of us who were only eight years old at the time.  We found Miss Lucy in the old quarry.  It hadn’t rained and the sides were steep.  Guess she went for a swim and got too tired to climb out.  When they pulled her body from the water, she was so pale and bloodless, it was like her skin was translucent.  I still have nightmares about it.  Even her eyes had lost all their color, wide open and staring at the sun.  She was whiter than death, like a ghost made flesh.  That’s what those vampires looked like.  Not like a dead thing, but like death itself, like a mockery of the living.”

Steve looked down at his hands, at his own pale skin, even more bloodless and cold than he’d been before the serum.  He wondered if his eyes were losing their color.  Would he notice the blue fading away?  Would he know if he was becoming a monster?

He flinched when the big guy, Dugan, boomed out a laugh and clapped Gabe on the back.  “Christ, Jonesy, now I remember why we banned you from telling ghost stories.  ‘Whiter than death’?  What the fuck is that?  You oughta be writing horror stories, like that Jekyll and Hyde comic.”

Gabe raised an eyebrow at him.  “That’s actually a novel.”

“No, it’s a comic!”

“Robert Louis Stevenson,” Gabe said, punctuating each word.  “The Unusual Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

Dugan reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a battered comic.  He handed it over to Gabe with a smug grin.

“That’s --”  Gabe looked it over.  “What the fuck?!”

Gabe sat down on the ground and flipped through the pages.

“The best part is where he changes,” Dugan said, reaching for the comic.  

Gabe swatted his hands away.  “I’m trying to read.”

“But it’s the best part!”

“I’ll get there!”

“Hey Jonesy,” Dugan said, sitting down beside him.  “You could read it out loud.  If you want.”

Gabe shrugged, but there was a little smile at the corner of his lips.  “Yeah, sure.”

As Gabe started reading, Bucky took hold of Steve’s elbow and pulled him away, to a secluded little spot behind a jeep.  He leaned back against it and said, “So.  That Carter‘s a real dish.  You two close?”

“Oh.  No.  We’re friends, I guess, but we’re not  _ close _ .”  Shit, he was blushing, and Bucky was already smirking at him for it.

“You like her though.  C’mon, don’t lie to me, I can see it in your eyes.  You should ask her out.”

“She’s not interested in me like that.  We just work together.”

“Jesus, Stevie, you never think anybody’s interested,” Bucky said, rolling his eyes.

“Because they’re not,” Steve said.   _ Not unless I force them to be, _ he thought.  That didn’t work on Bucky, anyway, and Steve wouldn’t have used it even if it did.  God, he was ashamed of how much he wanted to, though.  The hot press of skin against skin was only a pale imitation of the love he really wanted, but at least it would have been something.

Bucky kicked at a rock, scowling down at it.  “I saw how she looked at you.  You oughtta give it a shot.”

Getting the serum might actually have been less painful than this conversation.  At least in the capsule he’d been allowed to scream.  But this...Bucky always did this, pushing Steve toward one dame or another, when none of them wanted him and Steve only wanted Bucky.  It made it that much worse that it was Peggy this time.  Beautiful, dangerous Peggy.  He knew all too well how kind and clever she was, just like he knew all too well the sound of her voice as she moaned with the sort of pleasure he was never going to be allowed to give her.  

He’d heard Bucky before, too, on nights when their cots were on opposite sides of the room, and Bucky thought Steve was asleep.  He’d heard the dark little moans that weren’t meant for him.  He’d heard them, and he’d --

“There you are!” Howard shouted, jarring Steve out of his thoughts and making Bucky jerk a hand toward his belt, where Steve could see the handle of a knife hidden away.

Howard had a slightly glazed look in his eyes.  Steve realized with a guilty shock that he’d probably been letting the thrall slip out of his grasp again.  With an annoyed shake of his head, Howard said, “Just checking to see if you’d gotten a tent or whatever.  There’s room at the HQ hut, if you wanted...”

“No, thank you.  I --”

“He has a bunk all picked out,” said Bucky, with a weird edge to his voice and a sunny smile on his lips.   “He’s gotta stay with the guys, bein’ our mascot and all.”   

“Right,” Howard said, narrowing his eyes.  “Well in that case, mascot, I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow.  Maggie has plans for both of us.”

“You keep calling her that, and she’ll be making plans for where to hide your corpse,” Steve said, and Howard grinned back.

“Guess we’d better grab your gear and get you set up for the night then,” Bucky said, slinging his arm around Steve’s shoulders and giving Howard a little wave as they turned away.  

Once they got Steve’s bag out of the truck, Steve said, “So.  I have a bunk picked out?”

Bucky grinned.  “C’mon.  I’ll help you find one.”

He led the way to a row of tents, and pointed to the first one.  “That one belongs to O’Brien and Dugan.  You could bunk in there, so long as you don’t mind the gas.  I’m telling you, your buddy Stark could probably weaponize the smell Dugan makes.”

Steve couldn’t smell anything more than the tobacco and sweat scent of Bucky, but he shook his head and chuckled anyway.

“Now this one is Gabe’s,” said Bucky, pointing at the next tent.  “He shares it with Smitty.  He’s a fine choice, except for how he keeps the lights on half the night so he can write.”

“Sounds terrible,” said Steve, who had kept Bucky up more than one night drawing in his sketchbook.

“Oh, it is,” Bucky said, moving on.  “That one is Dizzy and Gibson’s.  Dizzy snores something awful, but otherwise they’re all right.”

“Maybe he should try those asthma cigarettes,” Steve said, knowing Bucky would remember the disastrous night when Steve had tried them.

“Nah, they don’t really work,” Bucky said with a lopsided grin.  He stopped at the last tent in the row.  “That just leaves this one.  There’s only one guy in here, but he’s all kinds of trouble.”

“Yeah?”

“‘Fraid so.  He’s probably just as smelly and noisy as those other guys, plus he gets all grumpy if someone leaves their shoes out or won’t go dancing.  And he’s the biggest worrywort.  Kind of a nightmare, really.”

“Sounds like the best pal a guy could have,” Steve said, pulling open the flap and stepping inside Bucky’s tent.

He tossed his bag on the ground, and at the sound of Bucky’s annoyed huff, he shoved it over into the corner, against Bucky’s.  He pulled out his bedroll and looked around at the floor, not sure where he should lay it out.

“It, uh.  It gets pretty cold at night,” Bucky said.  Steve turned to him, but he was looking away, arms crossed over his chest.

Steve unhooked the straps and knelt down to push the bedroll open, right beside Bucky’s.  When he got back to his feet, Bucky stepped closer and dragged him into a rough hug.

“Missed you, Buck,” Steve said, his voice muffled by Bucky’s chest, hugging him tight, careful not to break his ribs.

“Missed you too.”

They got ready for bed the same way they always used to, still totally at ease in each other’s spaces, and Steve hadn’t stopped loving this part of the day, the familiar wordless comfort of sliding past each other, undressing for the night.

They climbed into their bedrolls and slept the way they always did on cold nights, with Bucky’s back warm and solid against Steve’s side, and somehow it felt as if Bucky’s steady heartbeat was keeping them both alive.


	5. Chapter Five

Steve had woken up to lots of different sounds over the years. Kids screaming, cars honking, his own coughing, Bucky banging around in the kitchen, Mrs. Goldstein next door singing. But never this one.

“The hell is that?” he mumbled.

Bucky was already up, rushing around the tent. “O’Brien and his goddamn trombone.”

“You mean trumpet?”

“Nope. The idiot brought a fucking trombone, all the way from Idaho. Fuck. I knew you were gonna be trouble.”

“Me?” Steve peeked out of his bedroll. He’d never seen Bucky get dressed so fast.

“I’m late.”

“How’s that my fault?”

“Made me sleep in,” Bucky said with his cocky smile. He quickly patted Steve’s shoulder and darted for the tent flap, half his buttons still undone. “Gotta go. See you later.”

As Steve reached for his trousers he heard Bucky call from outside, “Make sure you eat some fucking breakfast, Stevie.”

“Yes, _Ma!”_ he shouted back, and it was safe to grin, since Bucky couldn’t see him.

He was wrong, though. Bucky’s head popped back through the tent opening, and he said, “Your mother was a beautiful woman, Steven.”

“Guess that's all the proof we needed you ain't related to her.”

Bucky flipped him off and ducked back out, laughing.

“She was also _prompt,_ Buck! Never late a day in her life!”

 _“Breakfast,_ Steven.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

He knew damn well that Bucky would check up on him about it, so he made sure he was seen when he stopped by the mess before he made his way to HQ.

Howard looked like he hadn’t slept at all, eyes heavy as he hunched over a table full of gadgets. Steve handed him the biscuit he’d grabbed. The testing and all had been frustrating at the time, but Howard and Peggy had done so much for him, and --

“What the hell is this?” Howard said, glaring down at the biscuit as if it had personally offended him.

“Breakfast.”

“Pfft.” Howard tossed the biscuit on the table and wiped his fingers on Steve’s shirtsleeve.

Steve was still deciding which curse words he wanted to shout when Peggy walked in.

“Good morning Steve,” she said cheerfully. “Where were you last night?”

“Oh, I was --”

“And did you use the thrall on that fella you were flirting with?” Howard said.

“What? No! That wasn’t some fella, that was _Bucky._ And I wasn’t flirting! He’s --”

“I’m not convinced you should be sharing a tent with him,” Howard said, flipping open one of his many notebooks.

“That’s hardly your decision,” Peggy said. “Though if there’s some reason --”

“THERE IS NO REASON!” Steve shouted. “I trust him more than anybody! He cared about me long before I got turned into ...” A monster, a vampire, a fucking mascot. “Into _this_. He’s my _friend_. He’s my --”

“Bucky,” Howard said, still reading his notebook. “Peg asked about the thrall, and you said, ‘I didn’t really spent any time around anyone except my...Bucky, my roommate, but he seemed fine.’ This is the same guy?”

“You wrote that down?!”

“I’m not just futzing around here, this is legitimate science. Of course I wrote it down.”

“Oh, is that what makes the difference?” Peggy said, and she took a big bite of the biscuit to cover her grin.

“Yes it is,” Howard said. “And why’d you assume that isn’t one of my experiments you’re eating?”

“It doesn’t have any vodka in it,” Peggy answered, with her mouth still half full.

Howard opened his mouth and pointed at her, then shrugged. He turned to pick up the first item on the table and passed it over to Steve.

The shield was beautiful, sleek and perfectly round in a way that appealed to his artistic senses.

“Ow!” Steve dropped it as soon as it touched his hand, unprepared for the stinging burn.

“Huh, I didn’t see that coming,” Howard said thoughtfully. “It’s a silver vibranium alloy, should give you an edge against almost anything spooky. I didn’t think it would affect you.”

Steve reached out again cautiously. “It’s not bad, I just wasn’t expecting it. Kinda stings a little.”

“You know, there’s an easy solution --” Peggy started, but before she could finish, Steve hefted the shield and flung it across the room with a deceptively gentle looking flick of his wrist.

It hit the filing cabinet across the room with a resounding clang, ricocheting from there into a bookshelf, then rebounding off the wall before landing back in Steve’s hand with a satisfying smack.

“That still hurts,” Steve said as he dropped the shield, shaking his fingers out.

Howard grabbed Steve’s hand, watching with fascination as the broad stripe of tiny blisters rippled across Steve’s skin only to shrink and fade without a trace. “You know, I had actually intended it to be defensive, not offensive. Shields aren’t usually used as projectile weapons.”

Steve shrugged as he pulled his hand back. “Anything can be a weapon if you hit someone hard enough with it, right Pegs?”

“Right. But, as I was trying to say, you should consider gloves if you’re going to use this.”

“I heal fast, it’s fine.”

“It is absolutely not fine,” Peggy snapped out. “Fast healing or not, you don’t want any unnecessary distractions on the field, and we don’t know how your healing responds to repeated injuries or prolonged exposure. No, Howard,” she said without turning around or breaking eye-contact with Steve. She and Steve both ignored Howard’s grumble of frustration.

“But Peggy! I won’t be able to throw it like that if I have heavy gloves on my hands,” Steve responded. He absolutely didn’t whine, and Peggy absolutely did not roll her eyes in response.

“We’ll get you trigger gloves, like the sharpshooters wear. Heavy duty leather over the palms, with your fingers exposed for dexterity. It really wouldn’t do to slice your fingers off in the middle of a fight.”

“Huh,” Howard mused. “I wonder if he’d grow those back.”

“We’re not going to test it,” Peggy said firmly. “We’re not Nazis.”

That didn’t mean Howard didn’t have an ever-growing list of other things to test, though, and Steve was exhausted when he finally trudged back to the tent he shared with Bucky.

“Damn, Stevie, it looks like that Agent Carter put you through the wringer,” Bucky said when Steve collapsed on his bed, too tired to even bother with unlacing his boots. He felt the cot sag as Bucky sat down by his feet and started on his bootlaces.

“She’s the toughest person I’ve ever met,” Steve said in agreement. His eyes closed of their own volition, heavy with fatigue. “I think I’d need three of me just to have a chance of keeping up with her.”

“Yea,” Bucky said slowly, almost sadly. “She’s one hell of a dame. You’re lucky to have found her.”

“I’d probably still be back in Brooklyn scavenging for scrap and knitting socks for you mooks without her faith in me,” Steve agreed, words slurring slightly.

“Not quite what I meant,” Bucky said with a soft laugh as he pulled Steve’s boots off.

“Mmmm,” Steve murmured, more than half asleep already. He thought he felt the soft scrape of fingers through his hair before his awareness faded.

 

* * *

 

Most days Steve got to spend time with Bucky and the men. He played lots of chess, even though Bucky warned them all, “Don’t even bother, ‘cause Stevie doesn’t lose.”

Steve didn’t lose, and pretty soon, nobody wanted to play him anymore.

After that, he passed a lot of time doing little sketches. It started with a pair of cartoon dogs fighting over a comic, and Gabe laughed when Steve drew a bowler on the bigger dog. Then the others wanted drawings of their own, and over the next few days he drew an elephant with its trunk twisted into the shape of a trombone for O’Brien, a duck smoking a cigarette for Dizzy, a squirrel for Gibson, and countless others sketches, each one making him feel a little bit like he belonged to something bigger.

But when the 107th was called up to the front, Steve didn’t go with them. The SSR operated in the shadows and behind the lines, and Steve’s skills weren’t the sort he could keep a secret on a busy battlefield. Not keeping them a secret wasn’t an option.

 

* * *

  

“Suit up, Steve,” Peggy said one lonely day. “We’ve got a mission.”

“You’re actually letting me out into the field?” he asked dryly.

She smiled, a flash of teeth that broke through her serious facade and gave him a glimpse of how delighted she really was. “You’re not the only one who has been wanting to stretch their muscles,” she said right back. “A contact in the French Resistance got in touch, said it was important. I need to rendezvous with them without raising any red flags. You’re going in as my muscle.”

Steve poked at his bicep, a wry smile on his face.

“You know what I mean! I want you to stay out of sight, keep your eyes and ears open and make sure this isn’t a trap, because there’s something off. I can’t put my finger on exactly what, but if there’s even the chance this information is real…” She shook her head. “It’s a risk, but this could prove to be critical to the war effort.”

The two of them made their way to a dilapidated barn, using stealth and speed and an abandoned jeep to cover twenty miles of occupied territory. Steve went first, senses sharp, moving fast and low across the open ground until he reached the shelter of the barn. Once there, he stopped and listened, hearing only the rustling of mice in the mouldering hay. He signaled once to Peggy to indicate it was clear, and then hid himself in the hayloft.

Hours passed. They couldn’t talk; Steve couldn’t move. The mold and dust settled in his throat and tickled at his lungs in a way that he was pretty sure he’d regret later, but making contact was more important than his asthma. Steve could make out the path Peggy was wearing in the dust with her pacing when he peered through the gaps between the planks of the floor he was laying on.

Finally, when Peggy had moved far past nervous anticipation into settled boredom and the shadows were hanging long and low outside, something changed. There was a heartbeat, faint and slightly wrong, small movements along the treeline. Steve signaled, and they both focused, ready for whatever might come.

The movement resolved itself into a small woman, brown and ordinary with no particular distinguishing features. She was furtive, cautious, but her heartbeat didn’t seem to indicate fear. It didn’t seem to indicate anything at all.

‘Just one,’ Steve signaled down to Peggy. She didn’t respond, but he knew she had seen.

Contact. Steve could hear them, but he wasn’t paying attention to their words. Peggy would get what she needed and could brief him later. He had a more important job, and something...something was wrong.

He was so focused on watching and listening that he almost missed the moment it happened. The brush of cloth-on-cloth almost covered the soft sound of metal dragging against leather, but nothing could disguise the acrid scent of fear -- not from Peggy, but from the spy, who lunged at Peggy with her knife.

Without thought, without breath, without a second’s pause Steve was on her, one arm pinning her torso against him while the other pinned the hand with a knife behind her back, his teeth extended to feed and tear. Her eyes met his, wide and terrified.

“Please…” she whispered. “Please save me from him…”

“There’s something else out there,” Peggy shouted, gunshots ripping through the silence.

“Kill me, please,” the spy whispered. “I’m already dead.”

A shadow broke free of the surrounding night, moving almost too fast for Steve’s eyes to track. He was moving before he had time to think, liquid and boneless with grace. He met the intruder head-on, punching and kicking with full speed and strength, only to be met by a speed and strength that matched it.

“Traitor,” his opponent’s voice rasped out. “Abomination!”

“At least I can’t be tracked by the smell of my breath,” Steve quipped in response, feeling pushed to his limits.

“You touched what is mine, and for that alone you would die.” The opposing vampire lashed out, and an unseen divot in the ground sent Steve reeling backwards, staggering for a step before he could regain his footing. It was enough time to give the other vampire the edge, and its hand closed around Steve’s throat, lifting him from the ground. Steve kicked, but he didn’t have the leverage to break free.

“My master will wish to know about you,” the vampire hissed, “but I do not think he will care if I bring him your corpse.”

Steve gasped for air, still struggling to free himself, but the vampire’s grip on his neck was like steel. Sudden insight hit, and he stopped fighting, going loose and heavy. This wasn’t something the vampire had anticipated, and it gained Steve a few precious seconds, just enough time to grab for the shield on his back. It burned his fingers, burned with a cold that sank into his bones, but what it did to his vampire enemy was worse.

The scream it let out was awful, unnatural and piercing and loud enough that every enemy soldier within a ten mile radius probably heard it. Steve hit him again with the shield, harder, and then let his instincts take over as his teeth lengthened and he went in for the kill.

Blood flooded his mouth, cold and bitter and burning. He spat it out, but the taste lingered. The vampire crumpled to the ground, lifeless and empty of the power that had animated it. Steve watched, horrified and fascinated, as the body crumpled to ash and dust before his eyes.

“Over here, Steve,” Peggy called him. She sounded tired, drained, and the bright copper scent of blood filled the air.

Steve ran back to the barn, shield at the ready, but there was nothing to fight when he got there. Just Peggy, cradling the lifeless body of the spy.

“She completed her mission,” Peggy said heavily. “She gave me what we came here for, and then she killed herself while you were fighting that thing. I think you distracted him enough for her to shake the thrall he had her under.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve said, helplessly.

She just shook her head in response, eyes tight. “Right,” Peggy said as she stood and brushed herself off. “The noise will have drawn attention our way. Best be well on our way before they find their way here.”

They made their way quickly and quietly away, abandoning the jeep and moving as best they could through the trees and brush instead of the road where they were more likely to cross paths with enemy forces. Steve led the way, his enhanced vision making it almost as easy for him to see in the darkness as he could in the day.

False dawn was lighting the sky when they finally stopped, sheltering against an outcropping of rocks that afforded them some cover.

Peggy sat down with a heavy sigh. “I am exhausted,” she said as she slumped back against the rocks.

“I’ll take first watch,” Steve said, “you get some rest.”

“Not yet,” Peggy said, sounding serious. “We have a decision to make first. Our contact gave me a set of coordinates before she...died. It’s the location of a lab, not far from here, where we suspect Hydra is working to weaponize the supernatural.”

“Like me,” Steve said with a grim twist of his lip.

“No,” Peggy responded, voice serious and eyes warm. “Not at all like you.”

Steve just nodded, unable to force words past the lump in his throat.

“I was tasked with retrieving these coordinates and taking them back to HQ, where we were to plan a coordinated assault in conjunction with the 107th. However, our spy indicated there was likely a leak somewhere within either the SSR or the 107th, and that there is some...urgency. Given the thrall she was under, I’m inclined to believe her on both counts.”

“So let’s do it,” Steve said. “We’re close, we’re not supposed to be there, and nobody is going to be expecting us.”

Peggy’s smile lit up her face despite her obvious exhaustion. “You do know how to show a girl a good time, don’t you?”

 

* * *

 

“What happened to stealth?” Steve gasped out as they ran away from the explosion.

“This seemed like more fun,” Peggy responded. She wasn’t having any problems with breathing, Steve noticed with some resentment. “Besides, what they had in there... Blood...tissue samples...destroying it seemed like a better idea than leaving it intact for them to do who knows what with.”

“Howard’s not going to be happy about that.”

“I couldn’t care less about making Howard happy,” she said with a bright grin. “But I did grab some of the samples, and all the documents I could find before I set the charges.”

Steve wanted to smile back, but breathing was becoming a serious issue. “Can we … stop … soon?” He had already slowed his pace, but he could feel the pressure on his chest building.

“Steve, stop, breathe,” Peggy commanded, and Steve did his best to obey her command, but he couldn’t force the air through the tightness in his throat. He gasped, and gasped again, panic setting in until he felt the stab of a needle in his thigh. The tightness in his throat eased, not much, but just enough that he could breathe in a thin trickle of life-giving air.

They sat in the darkness for an indeterminate period of time as Steve focused on breathing and letting the medicine work.

“I’m sorry,” Peggy said out of the blue.

“F’r what?” Steve asked, still not quite back to normal.

“I forget, sometimes.” She sighed. “For all that you can do, I forget that you still have limitations of your own. And I need to keep them in mind, because you’re certainly not going to remind me.”

“You sound just like Bucky.”

“I think that anyone who spends too much time around you ends up sounding like your Sergeant Barnes, or else they want to strangle you. Maybe both.”


	6. Chapter Six

Other missions came fast on the heels of the first. Sometimes it was extraction or exfiltration, Steve and Peggy learning to work together seamlessly. They made a good team, skilled and willing to take advantage of people’s perception of them as small, weak, non-threatening.

More often the missions were different. Steve would go out alone and come back sated but shaking, torn between satisfaction and horror at what he had done. The worst part of those missions was how good they felt, how natural it was to lure his target away to where they wouldn’t be seen, how fulfilling it was to feel his prey’s blood filling him up.

Maybe he really was a monster.

It would be easier, maybe, if he could talk to Bucky about any of this, about how easily he could kill now, about how each death felt like one less Axis soldier out there shooting at Bucky. About how it finally felt like he was making a difference, instead of watching everyone else make sacrifices while he was held back by his body’s betrayal. (“A weak body is a sign of a weak mind,” a doctor had once told his mother, when they both thought him asleep. “The weakness of the lungs is just a manifestation of that. You’d be better off letting him die.” Steve hadn’t heard what happened after that, but the doctor never showed his face in their neighborhood again, and the brunos who lived downstairs made a point after to keep their distance and tip their hats whenever they saw Sarah Rogers.)

It’s not like the men he’s eating are innocent in any way - the files the SSR provides are horrific, listing atrocities a younger Steve wouldn’t have believed anyone was capable of. He knows differently, now. He’d seen the depths of cruelty that ordinary, unremarkable, unenhanced humans are capable of, and that alone is what keeps him going some days. If it takes a monster to take down these monsters, then so be it.

But even when Bucky was around, Steve couldn’t share any of this burden with him. It’s classified, all of it - the missions, his transformation, everything. And if he told, Bucky would yell at him, maybe even pop him one like he did after he caught Steve running numbers for the O'Malley's.

Or maybe Bucky would hate him, now that he’s a monster. That would be worse.

Sometimes at night Steve watched Bucky sleep, just inches away, and he felt like there were entire oceans between them, oceans of secrets, broader than the Atlantic. But Bucky’s still alive, his heart still beating, and that’s worth everything.

 

* * *

 

“It’s not all vampires and espionage,” Peggy said, grabbing another handful of the mess in the bag, sprinkling it over the perimeter of the battlefield.

“I know,” Steve grumbled. “Rowan and Elder wood, burned in brass, the ash mixed with salt and spread to prevent those killed by violence from rising as either ghouls or ghosts.” He recited the words by rote. “I just don’t understand why we’re the ones doing this.”

“Because this is what the SSR was originally created for during the Great War,” Peggy said. “The Army used to handle their own purification rituals, but trench warfare meant that stronger rituals were needed than the average field commander could perform. You and I haven’t exactly focused on that aspect, but standard SSR agent training includes some rather graphic accounts of what happens when a ghoul or a vengeful ghost rises in a trench that’s still occupied by living soldiers.”

Steve shuddered. “Point taken,” he said, trying to ignore the images his imagination was conjuring as he reached for another handful of ash.

 

* * *

 

The 107th was finally pulled off the front lines, after what felt like an eternity of fighting their way through France.

Bucky.

He was whole, on his feet, organizing the setting up of tents and making sure everyone got fed. Taking care of everybody, as usual.

He was alive, he was alive.

Steve kept his distance, doing odd jobs, getting clean clothes to the soldiers, checking that they all had socks and blankets for the night. Finding a fresh notebook and pencil for Jones and putting them on top of his bedroll, and setting a comic he’d been saving on top of Dugan’s. The two of them were sharing a tent now, since O’Brien and Smitty hadn’t come back.

Finally everyone was as settled as they were going to get, and Steve ran out of little mascot chores to do, so he made his way to Bucky’s tent.

Bucky looked up when Steve opened the flap. He nodded, shoved his bag into the corner, and silently started to undress.

Steve did the same, clutching at the familiarity of the moment. They’d done this a thousand times before. The grief and terror that flooded the rest of the camp didn’t have to live inside their tent. They could move together like they always did, and it almost felt like home.

A bright, urgent smell brought everything else to a halt.

Blood. _Bucky’s_ blood, crimson and beautiful against his skin, ready to drip and run along the curve of his bicep.

“Shit,” Bucky muttered, using a wadded up sock to wipe at the dark wound, exposed and bare now that the bandage and all the layers of clothes were out of the way.

“Bucky ...” Steve barely kept it from becoming a moan. He wanted so many things, all of them at once. _Hold and feed and heal and protect and keep._ He couldn’t. Not any of those things, and Bucky couldn’t find out --

“It’s fine,” Bucky said, not meeting his eyes. “It’s only a scratch. Just need a new bandage, is all.”

Steve dragged a clean hanky out of his pocket and stepped closer, commanding himself to stay under control. He needed this, needed it more than anything. He held Bucky’s arm and forced his voice to be light with just a bit of edge as he said, “And what exactly did you scratch it on, Buck?”

He already knew the answer, he could smell the sulfur of the gunpowder, but it made Bucky turn away even more.

“Hard to say ...” Bucky lied.

Desperately hoping this would work, Steve quickly licked his thumb and swiped it over the cut. He put every bit of his will into the idea of _healing_ and _protecting_ as he tied the hanky around Bucky’s arm. He made it tight, like Ma had taught him, and without even thinking, he licked his thumb clean.

He had closed Howard’s wounds without noticing, operating on a combination of the animal instinct to keep his prey alive so he could feed again, and Steve’s own innate desire not to kill.

This was so much more.

_Heal and protect and KEEP_

As soon as Bucky’s blood touched his tongue, Steve could feel the power flowing out of him, a silver thread connecting him to Bucky. A tenuous connection that promised more and more and more, if only Steve would let it.

_Wrap Bucky tight in the thrall and never let him go. Never let anyone else touch him. Never let him be hurt again._

It was the first time Steve was grateful for the testing he’d been through, because even with all the practice he’d had, his control was teetering perilously. What his heart wanted and what his instincts wanted had never aligned so perfectly before, and it was almost too much for Steve to resist.

“There. Better already,” Bucky said, patting the makeshift bandage, finally meeting his eyes, with a tiny, crooked smile.

_Steve hugs him. It’s wrong, he knows it’s wrong, but Bucky is hugging him back, warm and fierce, heal and protect and KEEP._

It lasted longer than it should, before Steve finally found the strength to push himself away. That silver thread had tied itself tighter with every second, but Bucky wasn’t his to hold.

“Hey, it’s _my_ job to worry, remember?” Bucky said, ruffling Steve’s hair, bringing him back to himself. “You just gotta take care of you. Which is a job and a half, anyways. Can’t go adding my troubles to the mix.”

“I ain’t the one getting shot at, Buck,” Steve said, which wasn’t exactly true, but -- “Seems like maybe we’re both stuck worrying, ‘cause I don’t know how not to.”

If Bucky didn’t stop looking at him like that, Steve was going to hug him again, and never let go.

Bucky turned away, letting Steve breathe again, and grabbed his jacket out of the pile of his clothes, digging into a pocket. “We were all issued new tags when we got back here. I thought maybe --”

He looped a chain around Steve’s neck, letting the scuffed and dirty tags fall against his chest.

“As long as you’re gonna be worrying, you may as well have these. For luck.”

“It’s against regulation,” was all Steve could say.

Bucky gave a wicked grin. “Then don’t get caught.”

Steve swallowed and tucked the tags under his shirt. Against his skin. Over his heart. “Right. I just won’t get caught.”

 

* * *

 

“I’m not sure you’re going to do any good here, but my usual guys aren’t getting anything useful out of the prisoner and I’m running out of time and options.” Phillips looked distinctly unhappy as he chomped down on his cigar. “He mentioned Hydra once, and you spooky types haven’t been total deadweight, so I figure turning you two loose on him is worth a shot.”

“Yes sir,” Peggy said crisply, Steve’s echo coming a moment later.

“We’ve got twenty-four hours before the brass are going to demand that I send him to the Cage in London, and god alone knows how long it’ll take them to pass along anything they might learn. I don’t need to tell you how slippery Hydra has been. They clear out almost as fast as we find their nests. Go do your voodoo or whatever and for god’s sake, get me something useful! Dismissed.”

Peggy shot Steve a worried look as they made their way over to the cinderblock building where the prisoners were housed. “Are you going to be able to do this?”

“Lives are at stake, Peggy. I have to.” Steve’s jaw was squared in stubborn lines, but privately he was less sure. This, deliberately using the thrall to rob someone of their will, felt like crossing a line.

But this line had information that might keep Bucky alive on the other side, and there was nothing -- no principle, no pride, not even his very life -- Steve wouldn’t sacrifice for that cause.

Peggy took the lead, as she typically did. “You have information about Hydra. I want it, and I’m not leaving here until I get it.”

“So typical,” the German captain spat out. “Sending a woman to do a man’s job. This is why you will be crushed beneath the Führer's bootheel.”

“The only bootheel you need to worry about right now is mine, Herr Fischer,” Peggy said with an unimpressed curl of one eyebrow.

“I’m useless to you, I know nothing,” Fischer sneered. “I work logistics, moving paper from here to there. Nothing you can use.”

“Now, you and I both know that isn’t true,” Peggy said. Her smile was cold. “Logistics means you have troop numbers, details on unusual requisitions, _locations_ …”

Watching her work was impressive and terrifying, and Steve found himself wondering again what might have happened if she hadn’t been so clearly attached. She was breathtaking, magnetic, competent in a way that rejected compromise. She didn’t soften her edges in deference to the men around her, and she used the trappings of her femininity as weapons every bit as deadly as her pistol.

She was a goddess of war given flesh, and Steve wasn’t entirely sure if he wanted her, or if he wanted to be her.

“Enough, enough,” Fischer finally cried out. “I will tell you what you want to know. The scientific equipment, it was taken to a site twenty kilometers east of Bolanzo.”

Peggy narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “Casterotto is north-east of there, maybe --”

Steve cut her off. “He’s lying.” The untruth in his words was as clear as his heartbeat. Something about the way his eyes moved, the hitches in his breathing, the way blood moved under the skin of his face -- Steve knew, without a doubt, that the confession was a lie.

“You’re one of them, the nosferatu,” Fischer said with a cruel laugh. “Puny and weak as you are. It’s no wonder you’re all doomed, if you’re the best the Allies have to send against the Red Skull. He’ll take you and make you his puppet and use your body to kill your pretty pet!”

Steve’s mind went red with rage, and he bent the full force of the thrall onto the prisoner, who only laughed mockingly.

“You are nothing against the power of Hydra’s might! When they come for me the skies will rain the blood of your pitiful excuses for soldiers! We will raise their corpses from the mud and they will cut through your armies and cities like scythes! The banner of Hydra will fly over every building --”

Putting all of his stubborn will behind it, Steve pushed with the thrall, breaking through the strange resistance that had surrounded Fischer’s mind.

“I have him,” Steve whispered, “but I don’t know how long I can hold him for.”

Peggy wasted no time. “Give me all the coordinates for Hydra sites you have.”

“Fourty-six point eight north...ten point five east,” Fischer gasped out. “I belong to the Red Skull, you can’t hold me forever.”

Steve didn’t waste time with words, just focused his will like diamond while Peggy worked her magic. It was exhausting, and Steve felt gray and hollow with fatigue by the time they finished.

He waved off Peggy’s concern. “I’m fine, just need to get some shuteye. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He made it as far as the latrines before he lost control of his stomach, vomiting until he was empty. His body felt lighter for it, but it didn’t do anything about the greasy feeling of holding someone else’s mind, forcing his will on them. It felt like he was tainted, coated with a slime he could never wash free.

_Monster._

He trudged slowly through the camp to his tent, not even bothering with a cursory stop at the mess tent, even though Bucky was going to hear about him skipping meals, and say something, and that wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have tonight.

Sure enough, not even half an hour later Bucky came bursting through the tent flaps radiating a warmth and concern Steve didn’t deserve, not after what he had done today.

It was strange, really, that a simple interrogation felt so much worse than any of his other missions -- assassinations. Everybody had lived this time, but it still somehow felt like something had died.

“Steve! Dum Dum said you ain’t eaten anything since breakfast, and you barely ate any of your gourmet rehydrated eggs then.” Bucky was bright, and warm, and everything Steve couldn’t have and wasn’t worthy of anyway.

“And what would Dum Dum know about it,” Steve said, staring blankly up at the canvas ceiling.

“He’s on KP duty today is what,” Bucky said, “so don’t even try to pull that nonsense with me. I know you ain’t a horse like that mook, and the food here is shit, but there’s at least plenty of it when we’re in camp. C’mon, let’s go get some grub.”

Steve shook his head slightly. “M’not hungry Buck, you go on ahead.”

Bucky’s cot creaked as he sat down, pointedly not going on ahead without Steve. Fuck.

“Look, don’t think I haven’t noticed you’ve been barely eating enough to keep a bird alive,” Bucky said with a sigh.

“Birds eat half their body weight in food each day,” Steve said lightly.

“Yea, and you’ve been eating half’a that.” Bucky frowned. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but you can talk to me Stevie, you know you can.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Steve said, still staring up at the canvas above him. If he didn’t make eye contact, maybe Bucky wouldn’t realize something was wrong.

It didn’t work. “Steve. I’ve known you since you were picking fights with toddlers, you can’t pull wool over my eyes. There’s something you ain’t tellin’ me, something about your job as a so-called mascot, and it’s eating you up inside. Whatever it is, Stevie, whatever’s wrong -- we can get through it together, right? You and me, to the end of the line.”

“I’m fine, Buck, and I don’t need your fussing. My sainted mother died, I don’t need another one.” The blanket he pulled up around his shoulders as he turned his back to where Bucky was still standing felt like a wall.


	7. Chapter Seven

Steve had been out on recon, but before he even made it back to their camp he knew that something was wrong. He could feel it in the air, twisting in his chest, a sense of wrongness that made every bird call seem like a dark omen.

The camp had been practically empty for the past week, ever since the 107th and nearly every other unit in the area had marched out on urgent orders from above.

As he crested the rise, it became clear the camp was no longer half-empty. Instead, it looked like someone had kicked over an anthill, soldiers and jeeps alike moving to and fro in every direction in what looked like utter chaos.

He raced toward the mess hall, because that was where news usually got passed along, but before he even got there, he saw Dizzy staggering between a row of tents.

Steve knew. As soon as Dizzy looked at him, he knew. That soft sympathy in his eyes could only mean one thing.

“Steve,” Dizzy croaked, his voice raw. “They took him. I’m sorry, they took -- So many of them, and Barnes -- He stayed, tried to fight so we could -- I’m sorry, Steve.”

He couldn’t answer. He nodded and led Dizzy to the aid station, half-carrying him. Inside, the smell of blood in the air should have been overwhelming, but Steve was numb to it. Numb to everything except to the thought that Bucky might still be alive.

He propped Dizzy in a chair and patted his shoulder, muttering some kind of reassurance, but he didn’t hear himself.

What he heard was someone speaking in German.

Peggy. Standing over a German soldier, fastening cuffs around his wrists as a doctor quickly stitched a gash on his thigh.

“Sprechen sie Englisch?” Peggy was saying.

“Nein, nein,” the soldier said, shaking his head.

Steve snarled, “He’s lying.”

Faster than Peggy could move to stop him, Steve snatched up the soldier by his collar. “Where did they take the prisoners?”

“I -- It is not -- I cannot --”

“TELL ME.”

“Thirteen kilometers northwest of Azzano,” the soldier said, in an eerily blank voice. “In an abandoned slaughterhouse.”

Steve hadn’t thought he could be more angry, but somehow the word ‘slaughterhouse’ made it happen. He ground his teeth together, savoring the burn of emerging fangs, relishing the sudden terror of the man in front of him. Death could come without a thought, messy hot and metallic, rushing down Steve’s throat, making him stronger, feeding his rage --

He stepped back and shook his head.

“You will tell her everything,” Steve commanded, pointing at Peggy, the only person in the tent who hadn’t shrunk away from him. Even the doctor had crouched behind a nearby table. “Everything. Leave out the smallest detail and I will make sure you live just long enough to regret it.”

Steve stalked out of the aid station. Azzano was at least 120 kilometers away. He was going to need a ride.

He threw open the door to the HQ hut. Howard raised an eyebrow at him from behind a pair of goggles and went back to whatever he was welding.

“I need to get into Italy,” Steve said with no preamble.

“Phillips can loan you a jeep or something.”

“I need to be there _now,_ Howard, and you have your plane.”

He finally shut off the welder and looked at Steve. “Maggie could talk Phillips into getting a plane out there, maybe.”

“Peggy’s busy, there’s no time. I have to get to Bucky.”

“Oh, I get it,” Howard said, his eyes going hard. “You picked me ‘cause if I say no, you can say yes for me.” He wiggled his fingers to indicate the thrall.

Steve was ashamed to realize that it had been in the back of his mind. “I don’t want to do that, Howard.”

“But you would, so what the hell difference does it make? The choice between doing what you want or being _forced_ to do what you want isn’t a choice at all.”

“Howard, I --”

“You know what, fuck you Steve. Go ahead and use the thrall, stop wasting my time.”

Steve took a deep breath and gathered his power. But instead of using it to push his will on Howard, he summoned up every bit of emotion he felt about Bucky.

The way it felt to be tucked up next to him at night. The way he looked when he was barefoot and smiling. The way he gave Steve a reason to get back on his feet every time he was knocked down.

He pulled all of those feelings together until he felt like his heart would fall to pieces, and he pushed all of it out at Howard.

“What the hell was that?!” Howard said, bracing himself against the workbench.

“That’s the reason I need to find him. Please, Howard I -- I can’t lose Bucky. I can’t.”

“Jesus christ. Fine. But don’t tell Pegs, she’ll murder us both for leaving her behind.”

Steve followed Howard to his plane, and the two of them went completely unnoticed in the chaos until they were taxiing down the runway, and at that point it didn’t matter. They couldn’t be stopped.

Once they were in the air, Howard reached under Steve’s seat and dropped a backpack he found there into Steve’s lap. When he saw the puzzled look Steve gave, he said, “You ever use a parachute before?”

Oh. A parachute. “Uhhh...”

Howard shook his head. “Right. Count to three, pull your cord, bend your knees when you land. Try not to die.”

“Gee, thanks,” Steve said, slipping the straps over his shoulders. “Didn’t know you cared.”

“Ehh, you’re a valuable piece of US Government property. Can’t risk an investment like that.” He shot a warm smirk at Steve and went back to checking instruments and doing whatever a pilot does. Keeping his eyes locked on the windshield, Howard said quietly, “What you did back there at HQ -- I’ve never felt that before, Steve. Not even close.”

“Sorry,” Steve said quickly. “I didn’t --”

“No, just -- Just find him, alright?”

Steve hesitated, not trusting his voice. He cleared his throat and said, “I’d do anything to keep Bucky safe. I’ll find him.”

‘Or die trying,’ he didn’t add.

Howard nodded gravely, as if he’d heard what Steve left unspoken. Then he grinned and said, “Also, if we do live through this, I have some tests I want to run.”

“Oh hell.”

Parachuting out of the plane didn’t go too badly. If not for the serum the landing probably would have killed him, but as it was he only broke a few ribs, and they would finish healing by the time he reached the building, so it was fine.

It wasn’t that difficult to slip inside the slaughterhouse. Most of the guards he could convince to look the other way without them ever noticing him. The two he couldn’t only made him stronger.

Bucky was here. Steve could feel him, could sense him, could _smell_ him. The scent was confusing at first. It reminded him of fever and pneumonia, of being sick, which didn’t make sense, except ...

That’s what Bucky smelled like when Steve went days without keeping anything down and was too weak to get out of bed.

That’s what Bucky smelled like when he was terrified.

Steve didn’t bother trying to convince the next set of guards to look the other way.

He found a holding pen, the kind used to corral animals waiting for the slaughter. Inside were a group of men, muttering quietly among themselves in the dark and eyeing the hastily reinforced pen that enclosed them. Steve recognized the scent of two of them, Jones and Dugan, terrified and exhausted but not injured.

A trio of guards were easily destroyed, left bleeding out silently above a drain that was designed for exactly that purpose.

Steve wiped his mouth clean and rushed to the pen. He took the chain in both hands and slowly pulled it apart, keeping quiet so he wouldn’t rouse more guards.

 _“Steve?”_ Dugan whispered harshly. _“What the hell?”_

_“I’ll explain later. You need to get out of here.”_

_“How?”_ Gabe asked. _“There are fucking vampires here, and I don’t know what else. Even if we had guns, they wouldn’t work.”_

Steve reached back for his shield and handed it to Gabe. _“Silver,”_ he explained. _“I need to find Bucky. Take everyone and reconnoiter at the shed about a mile west of here. Keep them safe until we get there.”_

Gabe hefted the shield, as if he hadn’t expected the satisfying weight of it, and nodded at Steve.

 _“Fucking full service mascot we have,”_ Dugan said, ushering men out of the corral. _“Barnes was taken down this way.”_

Dugan started toward a hallway, to where Bucky’s scent was strongest, and Steve pulled him back. _“Stay with the others. If we’re not back in half an hour, get them to HQ. Make sure Peggy --”_

_“Don’t worry about your girl, Steve. We’ll take care of her.”_

Steve’s mouth dropped open at everything that was wrong with that statement. He shook his head. _“Tell her what you’ve seen. She’ll handle everything from there.”_

With a quick pat on Dugan’s shoulder, Steve raced away down the corridor.

Bucky’s blood perfumed the air.

Steve moved on pure instinct, so fast that the walls became a blur around him.

There, oh there, Bucky was there, he wasn’t gone. But his skin was so cold it was almost gray, except one bright spot of heat. A jagged tear on his wrist, in the horrifyingly familiar shape of inhuman teeth, was draining all the warmth and blood from Bucky’s body, down into a silver bowl.

Faster than he could even perceive, Steve was beside him, running his tongue over the torn flesh on his arm, not to feed, never to feed, _heal, and protect, and HEAL._ Please, it had to work.

Agonizingly slowly, the bleeding ebbed, and the skin began to pull together. The same silver thread he’d felt earlier twined itself deeper into Steve’s soul, but he was already bound forever to Bucky, would never stop loving him, so it didn’t change anything. He pressed his lips to the still healing flesh of Bucky’s wrist. Willed it to heal faster, to take any of Steve’s power that he could give. To take and take, even if that silver thread destroyed him.

“Wh -- Steve?”

Steve looked up. Bucky’s skin was warm and pink, and his eyes were wide, staring at Steve’s mouth.

Shit. The blood. Steve wiped it off with his sleeve and started ripping away Bucky’s restraints. “I’ll explain later, let’s get you out of here.”

Steve moved to the other side of the gurney, away from the silver bowl. He remembered Peggy saying she’d tested him with silver, but that was before. He’d killed so many times since then, had tainted himself so deeply, feeding off the worst sort of monsters.

There was a pole there, with a bottle hanging from it, tubing in place to run an iv line. The liquid in the bottle was a red so dark it was nearly black, and Steve could feel power emanating from it. He shuddered to think what they’d planned to do to Bucky.

“Steve, it’s too fucking dangerous. You have to get out of here!”

“Yeah, and you have to come with me. Let’s go.”

He lifted Bucky off the table and turned awkwardly for the door. Bucky was too damned tall to be carried this way, and he squirmed to his feet, looking thoroughly stunned. “Did Carter teach you that?”

“Sort of?” Steve said, pulling Bucky’s arm over his shoulder and half carrying him through the door.

The hallway was empty, but Steve could hear shouting from the way he’d come. He didn’t know enough German to translate it all, but they were heading this way.

He dragged Bucky around the corner and into a stairwell, breaking the doorknob off behind them.

Bucky looked down at the doorknob, then up at Steve. He very obviously wanted to say something, but there were voices in the corridor, and Steve pulled him toward the stairs.

The higher they went, the more labored Steve’s breathing became, and going up was starting to seem like a very bad idea when --

“Ahh, so the traitor finally makes his appearance,” said a sneering voice with a light German accent.

They’d reached the top of the stairs, at a rickety open platform. The trench below them was probably designed for some part of the slaughtering process, but now it was filled with flames that licked greedily at the structure around them. The flames had an eerie green tinge that Steve would have recognized as particularly dangerous even without his training.

“I had assumed the reports were exaggerated, but it appears that you truly are a sparrow among eagles,” the same voice said.

He was a vampire. That much Steve knew, even without being able to smell him over the fumes from the fire. He stood tall and strong, fangs extended, left hand resting on the shoulder of a much shorter man with big round glasses and rabbity eyes, a gesture of assumed ownership.

The vampire had to be Red Skull, and that must be the scientist who worked for him, Dr. Zola.

“Erskine has done you a grave disservice, cheating you of the power that is the right of our kind, leaving you in this fragile shell. It seems he even failed to teach you how to use what meager powers you have. How to take possession of what you desire. How to consume, mind, body and soul.”

He ran his eyes over Bucky, just as possessive as the hand on Zola’s shoulder.

Steve stepped in front of Bucky, breaking Red Skull’s gaze.

 _“Steve ...”_ Bucky whispered. _“What the hell is it talking about?”_

“Oh yes, do enlighten my livestock before I make use of it,” Red Skull said.

A haze of fury snapped over Steve’s vision, his instincts screaming at him to pounce and bite, rend and tear, except --

_PROTECT_

That instinct was stronger, born in a playground brawl, honed in Brooklyn’s back alleys, strengthened by shared meals and shared beds. Tied in silver thread.

Red Skull narrowed his eyes, a frustrated scowl flickering over his face, and the urge to attack was stronger than ever, irrationally strong, as if ... As if it wasn’t all coming from Steve.

Steve chuckled. “Hey, if you want to get punched so bad, you can come on over.”

He reinforced the taunt by sending out a focused shove of the thrall, urging Red Skull to attack.

For a moment, it seemed as if it might work, and Steve braced himself. If he had his shield, he might stand a chance. Without it, he might last long enough for Bucky to escape. But he knew Bucky wouldn’t escape without him, that Bucky would do what he did every time Steve got into a fight, and this time neither of them would survive.

Red Skull tensed to leap across the chasm, but Zola pulled a pistol from his pocket and fired. His stance was terrible, and his hands were shaking visibly, so the shot went far wide of Steve and Bucky, but it certainly got Red Skull’s attention. The Skull turned and snatched the gun away, snarling.

“What’s the matter, _eagle_ , afraid of the sparrow?” Steve called. “C’mon.”

“They couldn’t possibly defeat you,” Zola said. “Why do you --”

Red Skull cracked the barrel of the gun across Zola’s forehead. “They want me to attack! Think, fool! Clearly Stark has given them a weapon, something you weren’t clever enough to predict.”

“Aww, don’t be like that!” Bucky shouted, surprising everyone. “We were just gonna have some fun!”

Steve turned to look, and Bucky was grinning and bouncing on his toes. In the flickering heat of the flames, it was impossible to tell if his pupils had widened or his pulse had quickened, and it was only from years of fighting at his side that Steve could tell it was an act.

Zola frowned at Bucky, then turned and dashed for the door, with Red Skull leaping after him.

As soon as they were out of sight, Steve tucked himself under Bucky’s arm to hold him upright. Bucky sagged against him, putting a lot more weight on him than he usually would.

“C’mon,” Steve said. “I think the only way out is over there. Can you walk on the beam?”

“Together,” Bucky answered.

It might have made sense to spread their weight out, but Steve hardly weighed anything anyway. Bucky edged out onto the beam, out over the flames that were starting to consume the entire structure beneath them. Steve went with him, keeping a hand on his shoulder to steady him.

Before the beam even moved, Steve could hear it start to give way. It was almost a reflex to grab Bucky around the waist and spring for the other side of the chasm.

He took most of the impact of their landing, gently setting Bucky on his feet as the beam fell into the fire. He rushed toward the scent of fresh air, sticking to the shadows as they slipped outside, dragging Bucky into the woods that surrounded the building.

Once they were safely out of sight, Steve leaned against a tree to catch his breath. Bucky rubbed circles on his back in time with his breathing, in and out, slowly, not fighting the pressure, in and out, slowly.

Once he finally got his lungs back under control, he started off toward the shed where they were supposed to meet Gabe and the others.

“So, how come these powers of yours didn’t fix the asthma?” Bucky asked as they walked.

“Dunno. Erskine didn’t --”

Shit.

Bucky snorted and shook his head. “Wow. How dumb do you think I am? I ain’t Howard fucking Stark, but I know damned well you couldn’t _carry_ me before.”

“I never thought you were dumb.”

“Oh, you just thought you couldn’t trust me. That’s much better.”

“Buck --”

“How long?”

“It’s all classified, I couldn’t --”

“How long, Steve? You been lying to me the whole time we’ve been in Europe?”

Steve looked down at the carpet of pine needles under his feet. “Since back home. Since that day I told you I got a job at the antique store. The serum was supposed to make me bigger. Stronger. A real...a soldier. The best soldier. I thought, if it worked, I could go over with you. Do my part. But it didn’t make me a soldier at all. It made me a monster. The worst kind of monster. And I wouldn’t have told you even if it wasn’t classified. I didn’t want you to know, ‘cause I didn’t want you to hate me.”

“Jesus, you fucking idiot.” Bucky stopped and wrapped Steve in a tight hug, with one hand tangling in his hair. “I could never hate you.”

Steve looked up at him, needing to be sure, but there was only an exasperated sort of affection in Bucky’s eyes. “You don’t know the things I’ve done, Buck.”

“Don’t need to. I know you.”

“Yeah. You know I lied, that I hid everything from you.”

“That you scared off a fucking vampire. That you made drawings for the guys, and kept all of us from falling apart. That you’ll always be my best pal.”

Bucky’s arms were still around him, and if Steve didn’t know better, he’d think -- but Bucky was immune --

“I know you healed me, twice. I know what it’s like to wake up next to you. I know that my favorite part of every day is when we get ready for bed, and you stand so close I can feel you breathing against my skin.“

Dancing without dancing, but never as close as they were right now, arms around each other, surrounded by the scents of sweat and smoke and desire. Never like this.

Bucky leaned in and pressed their lips together, soft and gentle but unmistakably a kiss. Unmistakably on purpose.

Steve pushed up on his toes and kissed him back, hard, the way he’d always wanted.

The way _he_ wanted.

All the strength the serum had given him didn’t make it a bit easier to push Bucky away, but Steve didn’t have a choice. “You don’t want -- It’s called the thrall, and I can make people do what I want, and -- You don’t want me. It’s just the effects of the serum.”

“Really doubt that,” Bucky said, stepping close again. “Unless you got that shit when we were twelve.”

“What?”

“Twelve years old, and you decided to start a fight with the Van Ness brothers. All five of them.”

“They started it, I was --”

“You got knocked on your ass, by every damn one of them.” Bucky ignored the frown Steve shot at him and stepped even closer. “I finally got you to run away, and we stopped in that alley on Sumpter. You leaned against the wall. The sunlight was shining down through the fire escape, and your lip was all swollen, and...” He brushed his thumb over Steve’s bottom lip and whispered, “God, I wanted you so much. Have ever since.”

Steve was staring at Bucky’s face, watching the way his eyes moved, the way his pulse flowed. He watched until he was sure. “You’re telling the truth.”

“That does happen occasionally,” Bucky said with a little frown.

Steve laughed. “It’s -- You’re telling the _truth.”_ He held Bucky’s face in his hands, wonderingly caressing his cheekbones, his jaw, the little dip in his chin, before finally surging up to kiss his lips.

Bucky laughed against his mouth and held him tight.

The explosion that happened behind them sent pine needles showering down through the trees.

“Shit,” Steve whispered, as a triumphant shout rose from ahead of them, one of the voices unmistakably Dugan’s. “Kinda forgot about the Nazis.”

“Yeah. We better get our guys outta here, before Dernier blows up the rest of Italy.”

It was a long, hard walk back to base. Jim Morita was solely responsible for the survival of at least five men, bandaging wounds and warding off infections and checking to make sure everyone was fed. Monty Falsworth somehow procured weapons along the way, and Dernier turned out to be just as good at cooking up rabbit stew as he was at making explosives. Bucky’s unerring sense of direction kept them on the right track, and Dugan was uncanny at seeing signs of enemy troops in time to avoid them. Jones kept them all together, translating for everyone and telling stories at night. Steve did his usual mascot duties, trying to give each of the men a pat on the shoulder and a moment just to be heard, doing little favors here and there and making sure they were all able to do their jobs to the best of their abilities.

The chance to sleep on a cot again had never sounded so sweet, and the sight of their tents sent a cheer through their ragtag little group, and through the rest of the camp, once they knew about their arrival.

When things settled down, Peggy bluffed her way through their debriefing with Phillips and convinced him to transfer Morita to the 107th and assign him, Barnes, Jones, and Dugan to an experimental unit under her command. She even made arrangements to bring on Falsworth and Dernier, who weren’t US Army at all.

Sometimes it terrified Steve to think about what she could do if she had the thrall.

 

* * *

 

It was different, serving with a team. His missions changed, fewer assassinations in the night and more assaults on Hydra compounds, surrounded by the scents of ash and cordite and Bucky.

Of course, more assaults meant more time spent huddling under sparse cover and trying not to get killed by ghouls or blown up by Howard’s inventions.

“Christ, Barnes!” Dugan shouted as the first beam of light speared through the building they were hiding in. “Mama hasn’t forgiven me for the last condolence letter they sent her, I can’t have them sending another!

The story of the urgent telegram that the brass sent out retracting the letter of condolence they’d sent to Mrs. Dugan had been retold at half the bars in France by then, usually with a dramatic recitation of the letter itself by Jones, who embellished it more and more every time.

Bucky hunkered down beside Steve and shouted back, “Stark said it was for emergencies! I didn’t think he meant it’d _cause_ us one!”

A streak of impossibly bright light speared the stone wall just above them, sending a shower of gravel down onto their heads. Steve braced his shield over them like an umbrella, just in time to intercept a hail of fist-sized rocks.

“Fuck,” Bucky muttered, huddling even closer to Steve.

Steve looked around. The others had all found their own shelters, under tables and benches, and in Dugan’s case, a door that he had propped between two chairs. “At least we’re on this side of the wall.”

“Won’t mean much if the whole thing comes down.”

As if the words had summoned it, an even brighter streak blasted through just to their right.

“Bucky,” Steve whispered.

Bucky turned to him, almost brushing their noses together, and he looked just as afraid as Steve felt, like he was not at all sure they were going to make it out of this.

Down by the floor where the others wouldn’t be able to see, Steve touched Bucky’s fingers. “I don’t have anything to give to you. The only thing I ever did have was Ma’s ring, and I left it back home, for safekeeping. But if I did have something, I’d give it to you.”

A little ghost of a smile played over Bucky’s face, and he reached into the inner pocket of his coat. He pulled out small shaving tin, opened it, and fished around behind the mirror to find a piece of paper. He carefully unfolded it.

Slightly smudged, the corners worn to soft roundness, but still in surprisingly good condition for all it must have been through, was the sketch Steve had made of himself, back before Bucky shipped out. Bucky folded it and tucked it away again. “I don’t have anything, either. But, I woulda -- If it was the kind of thing we could do, I woulda asked you to marry me.”

The entire building shook, and Steve had to close his eyes against the flash of brightness. “For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.”

Bucky’s lips brushed against Steve’s cheek as he whispered in his ear, “I do.”

“I do,” Steve said back.

They tangled their fingers together, until the blue beams of light slowed to a stop, and they all looked around and realized that they would live to fight another day.

They knew, of course, Dugan and Falsworth, Morita and Jones and Dernier. It was impossible to fight that closely with such a small group and not let something slip. They knew one of Steve’s secrets, and probably guessed at the second one, but Steve had saved them when the Allied forces had written them off, and that made him theirs. He protected them, and they protected him, and together they cut a swath through Hydra and left destruction in their wake.

For a time, Steve had exactly what he wanted, what he had hoped for when he heard the first rumblings of what was happening in Germany, back when most people still thought that wars were a thing of the past. He was fighting, making a real difference, saving lives, and he had Bucky with him, side-by-side, the way they were always meant to be.

 

* * *

 

When they got the word that Peggy’s team had located Zola, it felt like fate. This was their chance to get all the information they needed to take down the Red Skull and Hydra for good, and Steve’s team was the only one that could get there in time, the only team that had a chance of taking down whoever Zola might have protecting him. They were seasoned, strong, linked by fetters of trust that had been forged in bloodshed, and nothing could stand against them.

Then a hole opened in the side of the train, and none of that mattered.

When Bucky fell, Steve leaped after him, pulled by love and need and the invisible silver rope that tied them together. He put every bit of his superhuman strength into pushing off the train car, giving him the speed he needed to catch Bucky. But even the vampiric serum didn’t give him the ability to fly.

They were falling, together, and there was no way Bucky was going to survive.

Steve’s fangs extended and he bit at his own wrist, tearing open his veins so blood gushed out, spraying them both as the wind rushed past and the unforgiving earth grew closer. He shoved his bloody wrist onto Bucky’s mouth and, gathering every bit of the love and fear that consumed him, _pushed_ with the thrall.

“DRINK,” he shouted, words ripped away as they continued to fall.

 _PROTECT_ , his soul screamed.

And then they hit, and everything went red, and then black.

 

* * *

 

Steve knew pain.

He knew the crisp, sudden pain that came from fists and boots and broken bones. He knew the dull, constant pain of a twisted spine. Knew the endless ache of losing his mother, of never knowing a father. Knew the sharp ceaseless want he had felt for so long for his best friend, his only friend.

Nothing had prepared him for the soul-wrenching agony of waking up alone.

Time had passed, but he had no way of gauging how much. It was dark, and the deer corpse at his feet was the only sign of life he could sense. He felt hollow, like someone had carved out his heart and filled his chest with pain instead, an emptiness where he once felt connected to Bucky.

His heart had stopped beating. It seemed appropriate, somehow.

He endured.

He made it back to civilization, ignored the questions about how he had survived, and interrogated Zola with a cold efficiency that was the only thing he would let himself feel.

He shrugged off Howard’s concern and Peggy’s compassion. Threw himself onto a moving plane and fought Red Skull with ruthless efficiency.

When the opportunity came he didn’t hesitate, crashing the plane into the arctic ice, saving the world.

He could feel the cold burning, within and without, and welcomed the silence.

 

* * *

 

It didn’t last long enough. It didn’t last forever.

“You've been asleep, Rogers. For almost 70 years.”

Steve didn’t have the heart to tell him that his heart was still frozen.

**Author's Note:**

> We do have a sequel planned for this, but it's in early planning stages and it's going to be a while before it gets written since we have multiple other things we want to tackle first. Thanks for reading!


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